


Disaster Movie

by Jay Tryfanstone (tryfanstone)



Category: Transporter (Movies)
Genre: Caves, Gen, M/M, Original Character Death(s), floods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-13 22:35:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9145234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tryfanstone/pseuds/Jay%20Tryfanstone
Summary: “Have you forgotten ’66? Seven people died here, Duval, and every prediction we have now suggests the water table has risen. I am not sending my men to their deaths. Don’t even ask.”This is a disaster movie. In the tradition of disaster movies, people die. There is a small dog, an insider villain, and rather a lot of water: there are fewer cars than is generally normal for the fandom. There are also guest appearances from people who are unlikely to ever appear in this canon, but may have been spotted elsewhere, streaked with dirt and sweat, rescuing small children and scantily clothed actresses.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For V. Happy Birthday!

In sunshine the coastline was sharp-edged, rocky, ragged, cut with tiny white-sand bays and serrated cliffs. Waves ruffled the sea, sweeping in to winnow the tide line and crash against crenallated rock, the sun-shot spume blinding white. It was midday. Heat haze shimmered above the coast road, although the sea breeze tugged at the cliff top heather and whipped through the palm trees edging every tiny beach-front promenade. 

Inland, short, wiry grass and tangled shrub covered hills and escarpments, making crazed patterns of the white limestone pavements. Roads twisted through the river valleys and curled into tunnels, connecting small villages and market towns. A quarry cut into the valley side, trucks heaving stone along dusty tracks, a farm advertised asparagus and roses, and a child played on a trampoline while another one watched. A couple finished a late breakfast, croissant crumbs and empty coffee dishes scattered under the honeysuckle trellis of a patio looking over the river. Two young men argued with intimate intensity on the corner of a street. A woman walked to work, the swing of her hips echoed by the tapping of her heels on stone and the sway of her long black plait. An elderly man tipped bottled water into a silver bowl for his panting dachshund, while a younger woman, in a Hermes scarf, pecked at her iPhone: an Englishwoman, taking a brisk promenade along the brief sea front, spared a smile for the dog.

The sky was clear, a pellucid summer blue, and the shadow of the car accelerating through every twist and turn of the coast road was no wider than the width of the wheels. White dust tracked the car's progress, blurring the glossy black paintwork and the shadowed windows.

The man driving the car activated his satellite phone. "It's me," he said.

"There is no cream in your refrigerator, Frank." 

The phone had been answered sixty kilometers down the coast. Here, raked gravel and lavender beds surrounded a white-washed villa. The rooms were spacious, the ceilings high, the kitchen comfortably untidy, boots by the door and towels by the range. The cupboards were handmade slatted wood, pastel. Dried herbs, garlic and lavender hung from a laundry rack, suspended two meters below the rafters of the ceiling. The floor was slate, the pans beaten copper, and the butcher's table had the rich, expensive patina of age. 

The man in the kitchen had his phone tucked between chin and shoulder, a spatula in one hand and a frying pan in the other. There was a half-full carafe of very dark coffee on the table and a bone-china mug on the counter.

"Listen carefully," said the man called Frank.

"Oh, now you tell me," said the man in the kitchen. He wore an open shirt, slacks, sandals and sports socks. His silvered hair was cropped short to his head, and his eyebrows had the sardonic tilt of hard-won experience. "Frank. Frank. In half an hour you will meet a man in a car park in Avignon. He will give you a suitcase. You will transport this suitcase to _La Roque Gris_ , where you will deliver it to a woman in a red dress whom you will meet on the 11.45 tour of the caves. It is my job," he said, "To know your job. This is not complicated. You have read Balzac? I do not need my stomach crawling with ideas at breakfast. Breakfast is a time for contemplation, cogitation, relaxation. I am an old man, Frank, and I require cream with my coffee."

The man called Frank readjusted his hands, very deliberately, on the steering wheel. He wore black leather driving gloves, very thin, smooth over his knuckles. Broad-shouldered, a receding hairline disguised by short-cropped hair, his suit superbly tailored, he was twenty years younger than the man to whom he was speaking. "I don't know why I bother," he said. "Speak to Henri. He will deliver."

"And Henri will speak to Jean, who will speak to Marc-Antoine, who will speak to Marie with the cafe and the big mouth," said the man in the kitchen. "You want this?"

"I don't care," said the man called Frank. "Do you?"

The man in the kitchen hesitated, regarding his omelette. The spatula remained upraised, the egg hissed, the man thought. The boots drying by the stove were carefully polished, one set smaller than the other. "No," he said. 

"Good," said the man called Frank. 

The man in the kitchen plated his omelette. He picked up the bowl of coffee, inhaling the scent with a smile, and carried mug and plate over to the kitchen table, which was already laid with a single place setting. He unfolded his napkin. "Call me," he said. "I have a vested interest."

The man called Frank sighed. "Yes, Inspector Tarconi."

"Good," said Tarconi. "I like the sound of that comment, Transporter. You may repeat it." He had been cutting the omelette, neatly, thoughtfully. He added, "I would have cooked for you."

"I know," said the Transporter. He reached out, finger over the disconnect button. The car darkened, momentarily, the shadow of a cloud. The tunnel entrance was a hundred meters away, four seconds. The Transporter hung up.

~*~

On the promenade, the woman with the iPhone tapped at the screen, frowning. Wind disarranged her scarf and she snatched at it, frowning. The dachshund snapped at her ankles, yapping, ears blown back.

"Jean-luc," she said, stepping back.

"He's only playing," said Jean-luc. He had picked up the water bowl and was wiping it, fastidiously, with a silk handkerchief. The dog's lead tangled around his ankles, creasing the tailored line of his linen trousers. "Freddie. Freddie, stop that." 

His voice was mild. 

"Freddie. This is not good manners." 

The dog paid no attention. 

"It would help, you know," Jean-luc said to the woman with the iPhone, "If you moved away. He's less likely to be distracted." 

"I am not here to-" A sudden gust blew her hair over her face, straight-cut strands of platinum blond. Her cheeks were flushed under her make-up. "I'm trying to do my job," she said. 

"I understand," said Jean-luc. "I am nearly sixty, you know. Sixty! Do you think you are the first person to stand there tapping away at your machine, saying, it is ten, Jean-luc, we need to be at the radio studio, it is eleven, you must speak to this journalist? I am Jean-luc Devonaire," he said, drawing himself up. He wore gold-rimmed glasses, very neat, and a pencil moustache, and had very fine eyebrows. His suit was Italian, his brogues patent leather, and the handkerchief he was tucking into his pocket was monogrammed. "Fine, fine. It is your job, I understand. So now we have taken Freddie for his walk, you will buy me coffee, and then we will depart." He smiled, very swift, a smile meant for the flash of a camera. "Yes?"

"I'll let them know we'll be late," she said. 

The Englishwoman was already sitting outside the cafe. She had, as all Englishwomen, a carafe of tea, and a teacup, and a saucer, and a small jug of milk, and a small pot of sugar and a teaspoon and also a napkin and a newspaper, held down by the carafe and the sugar bowl. She wore tweed, and there was a handbag, of the kind of pedigree which appeared elderly rather than vintage, tucked under her seat. Behind her, the son of the cafe owner lingered, fascinated. She was the kind of Englishwoman of indeterminate age and assured posture most commonly found in the Alps, in spring, or in Brittany, in autumn, buying bread and cheese and apples in the marketplace. Also, as was apparent by the cafe owner's son's fascinated stare, on the television, in imported period dramas featuring unlikely detectives and domestic murders of labyrinthine complexity. 

"Ah, Filippe," she said. "Would you mind fetching some more milk, please?" Her French was simple, clearly enunciated.

"Of course, Mrs. Wickens," said Fillippe, hustling. 

"It's a fine day," Jean-luc said. "I think, if this elegant lady does not mind, I shall sit outside and enjoy the sunshine. Madame?"

The Englishwoman looked up. There were three tables outside the cafe, tucked under the awning. The furthest was occupied by a boy and a teenage girl in a wheelchair and a young woman with a bag full of drawing books and pencils and paper handkerchiefs, the second by three middle-aged men in overalls. "Of course," she said, and moved the newspaper, tucking her bag a little further under her chair.

"Jean-luc," Jean-luc said, with a duck of his head. "Thank you. It is a beautiful day. " He was dusting the seat of the chair with his handkerchief, not the one tucked into his breast pocket, but the one he had used to clean the water-bowl. 

"Yes," said the Englishwoman. She moved the carafe a little closer to her side of the table. The corners of the newspaper ruffled, caught by the breeze from the sea. The sky was blue and the sun warm, and the waves sparkled as they rolled into the bay: the breeze was not cold, but gusting. 

"Jean-luc Devonaire," said Jean-luc. "Pleased to meet you."

"Kathleen Wickens," said Mrs. Wickens. "Mrs. Kathleen Wickens."

"Ah," said Jean-luc. "So, in a moment or two my assistant will bring coffee - her name is Nicole - and we will sit here for a few minutes and drink it, because it is a beautiful day, and then we will leave you alone. I am not a fool, _hein_? I know what it means when a woman wants to be left alone."

"Oh no," said Mrs. Wickens. "Not at all. You're welcome to sit here." Her eyes kept sliding back to the newspaper. 

"Terrible, isn't it?" said Jean-luc. He folded his hands, leaning back. "These terrorists. Such violence, it's inconceivable. What is it now, twenty people dead?"

Mrs. Wickens was reading Le Monde. The front page, and the four after it, were images of Paris, Metro stations and roads with burnt-out cars and shattered glass and emergency vehicles.

"They're not sure," said Mrs. Wickens. She flattened out the newspaper. Jean brought more milk. One of the children was trying to coax Freddie from under the table.

"And the shooters," said Jean-luc. "A bomb - two bombs - in the centre of Paris. It is enough to make one think twice about travelling, no? And to look askance at - forgive me," he said, "You were reading." He looked away, pointedly. Across the square, two young men stood close together, waiting for the local bus. They wore red and white jerseys, like football players, and one of them carried a large, heavy bag which looked as if it might contain golf clubs, or lacrosse sticks. "Immigrants," Jean-luc muttered under his breath. The young men, dark-eyed and slender, might be Algerian, or possibly Tunisian. 

Mrs. Wickens looked up from the newspaper, her face very still. 

"Ah, you think this is racist?" Jean-luc said. "But I think, this would not happen when I was young, this kind of incident. Only when we started letting everyone into the country -be careful, child," he said. The teenager had rolled forward, and had succeeded in tempting Freddie from his stance at Jean-luc's feet, leaning from her wheelchair. "Sometimes, he bites. He doesn't mean to, of course."

"Vikki!" said the young woman at the table, looking up. 

Vikki had pulled back her fingers in a hurry, hissing. Freddie looked smug.

"Only a little nip. Ah, Nicole! Coffee, at last."

Vikki spun the chair back to her own table. She was holding her hand stiffly, one finger reddened. Her mouth was set in a very straight line. Nicole was setting down coffee, two bowls, napkins, sugar; hot water...Mrs. Wickens folded up the newspaper and pushed her chair back. Metal legs screeched across the paving slabs. 

"Please," said Jean-luc, "No need to leave. Nicole, where are the - ah, you did remember. Stay, stay. Can I get you more tea? Nicole!"

"It's fine!" said Mrs. Wickens. "Please."

Nicole was still standing. She pushed her hair back from her forehead: there were three large rings on her hand, and a medley of bracelets. One of the overalled men was glancing at her out of the corner of his eye, while the one directly opposite was smiling. Nicole wore a silk dress, white, with red polka dots, and a brief linen jacket. Fashion plate wear for the South of France. "Shall I-" she began. 

Jean-luc unfolded the napkin, very neatly, slowly. Nicole sat down. For a moment she stared at the square, the cobbles and the whitewashed houses and the geraniums outside the windows, the two men at the bus-stop and the black car parked outside the boulangerie, and then she pulled out her i-pad. 

"She is always looking at that machine," Jean-luc confided. "Nicole, this is Kathleen. Kathleen, Nicole. Nicole is my minder. Perhaps I should not say that? My personal representative. I am voicing a DVD," he said. "About the caves. You know the caves? La Roque Gris? They are quite beautiful, I'm told."

Mrs. Wickens reached for her tea. "Yes," she said. "I know the caves. You're a voice actor?"

Jean-luc blinked. "An actor," he said. He'd drawn back, setting his coffee cup down with a distinct click, china ringing. 

"I'm sorry," said Mrs. Wickens. "I don't see many French films."

"I have filmed all over the world," said Jean-luc. "French films, American films, Italian films..."

"I won't go!" It was a piercing protest. 

They all turned. The young boy was standing up. He said. "You're not my mama! I don't need to do what you say!"

"Totophe!" said the young woman with the children. "Totophe-"

"Don't call me that! I'm _Christophe_!"

"Christophe, please! It won't be for long, just an hour or so. And your sister-" 

"Vikki always get what she wants!" Christophe shouted. 

"That's not true!" said Vikki, slamming her book down on the table. "Totophe, that's not true."

"It won't be for long," said the young woman, "And then we can have ice-cream. You'd like that, wouldn't you? Anything you want."

"I don't want to go to any stupid caves!" said Christophe.

"They're not stupid!" Vikki said.

"Christophe, Vikki, please!" 

One of the overalled men leaned forward. "You're going to Le Roque Gris?" he said. "It's a good place. Very good ice-cream." He was smiling.

Startled, Christophe looked at him. "How do you know?" he demanded.

"I work there," said the man in the overalls. "Myself, and Pierre, and this lump with the beard. We work there every day. You see how dirty we are? That's because of the mining."

"I thought they were caves," Vikki said.

"That's right," said the man in overalls. "Big caves. So big there's a river running through them. There are caverns full of stalactites and stalagmite, and quartz, and lights - they have all different coloured lights, you know, so the rock is lit up like a film set? And-" 

"What about the ice-cream?" said Christophe.

"That too. Chocolate, for sure. And strawberry. All kinds of flavours."

"What are you mining for?" asked Vikki.

"Well," said the man in the overalls. "I'd tell you, but I'd loose my job. The police would come and arrest me. But you can guess."

Vikki and Christophe looked at each other. "Rare earth!" said Vikki.

"No," said the man in the overalls, still smiling.

"Gold," said Christophe. 

"No."

"Diamonds," said Christophe.

"I can't tell you," said the man in the overalls. "But you should keep a careful eye out, when you're in the caves. And listen to - Miss, what's your name?"

"Veronique," said the girl with the children. "Veronique Malet."

"You should listen to Veronique. The caves are not always safe."

"Really?" said Christophe.

"Really," said the man in the overalls. "You could trip and fall. Or get tired - the passages go back miles into the hill, you know, although for tourists the path is concrete all the way. And dark. You'll need torches."

"I'm not that little," said Christophe. "And Vikki's brave, for a girl." 

"Thanks, squirt," said Vikki.

"And then ice-cream," said Christophe, firmly. 

Veronique was nodding. "Yes, ice-cream," she said. "Anything. But we must - the bus is due, please, pick up your things."

Perfectly timed, the heavy rumble of the bus engine sounded. One of the young men at the bus stop picked up the bag, the driver started his car, and Mrs. Wickens reached for her bag.

"Ah!" said Jean-luc. "You are also going to the caves?"

"Yes," said Mrs. Wickens. She was trying to secure a ten franc note, a tip, under the carafe for the tea.

"Then come with us," said Jean-luc. "We have a car."

Nicole was glaring.

"It would be a pleasure!" Jean-luc said. "Please, allow me - it's the least I could do after stealing your table."

Mrs. Wickens paused, evidentially torn. "Well," she said.

Crossing the square, Vikki dropped her book, and had to spin her wheelchair to pick it up. Christophe shouted, "Hurry up! Hurry up!" His voice, shrill, echoed across the square. 

"Thank you," Mrs. Wickens said. "That would be very kind."

"Good," said Jean-luc, ignoring Nicole with practised composure. "Then, shall we?" 

He did not wait, processing towards the car with Freddie trailing at the end of his leash. Nicole snapped the cover on her i-pad and followed, with a tight smile. Mrs. Wickens picked up her bag, and began folding the newspaper. A couple of drops of water marred the print. Glancing up at the blue sky, she held her hand out for a moment, palm up, waiting for rain.

"Kathleen!" Jean-luc called.

The cafe owner came out to tug at the awning, the three miners dropped some coins onto the table, and Mrs. Wickens got into the car.

~*~

The general office was a portacabin. It was perched on the edge of the car-park, behind an arras fence, although a thick line of cables snaked across the concrete and up through the window. A sign on the outside read, 'Site Office. BPE Engineering. Private'. Behind it, there were two cabins for the miners, although the office was a few hundred meters from the business end of the excavations, where a stilled conveyor belt and a parked dumper truck guarded massive spoil heaps of rubble and grit.

Inside, there was a row of filing cabinets and three desks, each with a computer screen, two of them covered in papers and one sporting a single coffee mug. There was a dark green pot plant, dusty, on top of the piling cabinets, and a row of hooks on the wall which held the bright yellow safety jackets and hard hats familiar to any construction site. Three men huddled around one of the computer screens, one in overalls, two in shirts and trousers. 

"So what do you expect me to say to him?" one of the men said, the one with the red tie. His face was flushed, his fists balled at his sides. "Sorry, sir, some amateur meteorologist texted and now the miners won't work?"

"Have you forgotten '66?" said the man in overalls, with equal force. "Seven people died here, Duval, and every prediction we have now suggests the water table has risen. I am not sending my men to their deaths. Don't even ask."

"Let's look at this calmly," suggested the third man. "Duval, I think you'd agree that we have no interest in risking people's lives, where evidence suggests they are at risk?"

"...no," said Duval.

"And, LeClerc, I think it's fair to say that your BPE miners have an excellent work record? No industrial disputes in the last ten years?"

"Well," said LeClerc, "In all fairness, there was the dead cow incident of 2010."

"Apart from the dead cow incident."

"No, nothing," said LeClerc.

"So. LeClerc. Give me two good reasons why we should shut down the workings."

LeClerc grimaced. He held up a finger: he had broad, calloused palms, thick fingers, a working man's hands. He said, "Tondrian is, yes, my friend. He is also one of the world's experts on extreme climate. He is the meteorologist for the French team on Everest, understand? If he says, LeClerc, pull your men out, monsoon rain and flash floods this afternoon, I believe him."

He held up a second finger. The third man had his hand on Duval's shoulder, stilling him.

"And MacQueen has been saying for three weeks the new galleries will change the water course. No one expected the aquifer. The drainage pattern has changed. The risk of flooding in the excavated galleries is not the same as the risk assessment we made at the start of the job." He stared Duval in the face. "I will pull-"

The third man stopped him. "Duval," he said. "Two reasons."

"Ten thousand francs lost for every hour the conveyor does not run," Duval said.

"So that's-" LeClerc began, heated.

Duval threw up his hands. "And you have met Trumperton!" he said. "He is - how am I supposed to tell him we have stopped work? Have you any idea what he'll do to me? To us? You will be off the job in two minutes. I will be out of a job. Everyone will be out of a job. He is not a reasonable man, understand?"

"I'm beginning to think-" 

The phone rang, shrill. All three men looked at each other, and then at the screen on the phone. Duval hit the palm of his hand of his forehead. "Trumperton," he groaned, and picked the phone up. "Sir."

"Yes sir," he said. "Yes. I'm sorry to say - well, it's-" he listened. His head bowed. He turned away to the window. He tugged at his tie, wrapping the red silk around his fingers. "I left a message - no, sir. No. I understand. Yes, sir," he said. "I'll tell him, sir." 

He put the phone down, very slowly. "Trumperton knows the conveyor has stopped," he said. "He says, either it starts again in the next fifteen minutes, or you're off the job."

LeClerc puffed out a breath. He stared at the table. Out of the window again, looking at the still conveyor. Then he looked at Duval. "Well," he said. "Well. Marc, you'd better take this back." He put his contractor's access badge on the table. "It's been good working with you," he said. "But I can't risk my guys. I'll see you at the next job, eh?"

"Toni," Duval said. "Toni. It's not-"

"I know," LeClerc said. "I understand. You be careful today, okay?"

After a moment, Duval nodded at him.

~*~

"So I'm sure you understand," said the man with the platinum blond buzz-cut, "This is not a change in your rules. This is merely an adjustment. A codicil, you might say." He smiled. He had a gold tooth, and a sub-machine gun.

"A deal is a deal," said the Transporter. 

"Of course," said the man with the platinum hair. "I did not say otherwise." He tugged at the chain. "I am not inconsiderate," he said. "You need to drive safely. It is in my interests that you and the parcel arrive unscathed at your destination."

The chain was a meter long. It ran from the Transporter's wrist to the handle of the suitcase. The suitcase was being held by a Russian who looked as if he had spent twenty years in the KHL. The Transporter was being held by two Frenchmen who looked as if they'd spent twenty years on the Marseilles docks. 

The chain was pristine. The suitcase was brand new, blood-red leather, with brass fittings. 

"Glad to hear it," said the Transporter.

"Then there is nothing more to be said," said the man with the platinum hair. "Please. Be seated." He gestured. One of the Frenchmen opened the car door. The other, tenderly, pushed the Transporter into the driving seat. The Russian watched the chain tighten. At the last minute, he twitched, shivered, and stumbled forward, pushing the suitcase at the Transporter. He had to fumble to place it into the car. The Transporter did not help. 

"Do not forget," said the man with the platinum hair. "Two o'clock. At the caves. The girl in the red dress."

The Transporter did not answer.

"Do not be afraid," said the man with the platinum hair. "This is just a precaution. A safety net."

The Transporter moved the suitcase onto the passenger seat. He fastened his right hand around the gear stick. His knuckles flexed. The steel bracelet on his wrist glinted. He connected the fob of his key ring to the sensor on the dashboard. The car started, the engine so perfectly tuned it was barely audible, even in the concrete echo chamber of the underground garage. 

"Oh," said the man with the platinum hair. He still had his finger on the trigger of the gun, but he was smiling. "One last suggestion. Don't get it wet."

The car accelerated up the ramp. Outside, the sun was still shining.

~*~

In the tourist car park outside the caves, Christophe was eating ice-cream. "This is really good," he said, muffled.

"Please, hurry," said Veronique. She had tugged on a pink cardigan, and her sunglasses were tucked into the neck of her t-shirt.

"The tour won't start until they've finished filming," Vikki said, without looking up from her book.

In the corner of the car-park, positioned so that the sheer limestone cliff of Le Roque Gris towered above him, Jean-luc was talking into the camera. His face was animated. He gesticulated with his hands. The handkerchief in his front pocket was pristine, and perfectly matched to his tie. The cameraman was circling his hand behind his back, in a universal gesture for 'wind this up', but Nicole was oblivious, still checking her i-pad. 

By the ticket booth, the tour guide was checking a clip board, huddled into a bright red sweat-shirt with a picture of a witch on the front. It was an image duplicated on the billboard beside the ticket booth, which promised magical mystery themed mini golf, a tour of the wine racks, and a cobwebbed grotto equipped with bats, brooms, cauldrons, and a remarkably attractive resident enchantress with considerable cleavage. The two young men with the sports bag had, considerately, turned their backs to her. One of them, the one in the t-shirt, was shivering, running his hands up and down his arms, but the other was wearing a Team Algiers sweatshirt and looked considerably warmer. A group of Italian tourists were standing near them, wearing matching yellow rain ponchos and sunglasses, talking loudly. Other visitors scattered across the car-park, retrieving coats from parked cars, finding pre-printed tickets and comparing guidebooks. A family, a couple and two teenagers, were packing up a hamper of wineglass and china, carefully wrapping cheese and bread.

Mrs. Wickens was seated at one of the picnic tables, reading her newspaper. In her tweed jacket, her scarf tucked firmly around her neck, she looked perfectly composed, oblivious to pick-ups and four-wheel-drives maneuvering in the staff car-park behind her. It looked as if every vehicle was leaving, men in overalls and hard hats with ear protectors queuing to pass through the gates. 

One of them, already seated in his truck, looked at the children. It was LeClerc, a timesheet in his hands, ticking off his staff as they left. When the last vehicle had gone, he checked his watch. Started the engine. Stared at the dashboard. Then, shaking his head, he turned the engine off, got out of his truck, and walked across the gravel of the staff car-park to the gate where the tour guide stood.

"Hey," he said. "Miss."

The tour guide took a step back. "You're not supposed to speak to the cave staff," she said.

"I know," said LeClerc. "But, Miss- San-Mei. It's not safe. I've ordered my men out of the caves. There's heavy rain on the way."

"I have a tour to do," said San-Mei.

"And I'm saying it's not safe," said LeClerc. "Listen to me. Don't take those kids into the caves."

"I don't think that's any of your business," said San-Mei. "I'm here to do my job. If the caves weren't safe, Duval would tell me."

"Look, is this about the whistling?" said LeClerc, "Because, I'm sorry. The men meant no harm. It won't happen again. Please, just trust me on this one."

San-Mei tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "It has happened again," she said. "Now. Tell me why I should trust you."

LeClerc said nothing. 

"Dirty miner," said San-Mei. 

"At least...be careful," said LeClerc. 

"That's exactly what Marie in the gift shop said to me when you asked me out to dinner," said San-Mei. "Be careful, she said, he's only out for one thing. Well, she must have been right. This is the first time you've spoken to me since. And how do I know you don't want me to loose my job, huh? Call off the tour, San-Mei! It's not safe, San-Mei!"

"Look, I'm - sorry," said LeClerc. "Please. Reconsider."

A black car slid into the car-park, rolling towards them. The driver was alone, a powerful man in a suit, just visible through tinted windows. The car stopped, little more than a meter from where San-Mei and LeClerc stood.

"That's my last guest," said San-Mei. "Goodbye, miner."

The cameraman was tucking his camera back into its case. Jean-luc was untying Freddie's lead from a fence-post, and Mrs. Wickens was folding her newspaper. 

LeClerc walked away, shaking his head. He bypassed his waiting truck, and jogged up the steps of the portacabin. He was nearly on the top step when he looked up at the darkening sky.

"It's raining!" said Vikki. "Veronique, quick - can you get my coat out of the bag?"

Raindrops were splattering the dust of the car-park, fat, heavy raindrops that left dark patches where they fell. Vikki was struggling to wrap her book in a carrier bag, while Christophe crammed the last of the ice-cream into his mouth. Irresolute, Nicole glanced between the open doors of the hired car and the dark entrance to the caves, and then gingerly pulled her scarf over her head. Jean-luc had retrieved an elegantly handled umbrella, which he with carefully calculated chivalry over both Mrs. Wickens and Freddie. The two Algerians were huddled in the scant shelter of the wall of the ticket-booth.

Opening the driver's door, the Transporter looked at the sky, grey and shadowing with clouds, and the car windows, already streaming with water. A gust of wind, curling up through the pine trees of the approach road and sweeping across the car-park, threw a scatter of raindrops at his face.

The Transporter's mouth tightened. He reached into the back seat, and pulled out a beige raincoat, Burberry. He had to put it around his shoulders, half-hiding the chain and completely covering the suitcase. "This is the last time," he said. Then he looked across the group of tourists, his eyes tracking from San-Mei in her red sweatshirt to Veronique in her pink cardigan and crimson sports skirt, from Mrs. Wickens in her burgundy-heather tweeds to Nicole in her red-polka-dotted dress, damp, and clinging to her legs. 

"Are we ready to start?" San-Mei called. "Please come to the gate!"

The Transporter sighed, and walked towards the tour group. San-Mei was gesturing with her clipboard, almost hidden by the huddling Italians and Jean-luc's umbrella. Nicole had taken refuge next to the Algerians, while Vikki, in a substantial waterproof enveloping enough to cover her knees and loose enough to allow her to spin her wheels, seemed inured to the downpour. 

"Welcome to Le Roque Gris!" sad San-Mei. Her voice was high, straining to carry over the thrumming of the rain on the tar-paper roof of the ticket booth. "We'll get under cover as soon as possible - there is no rain in the caves! But before we go in, there are one or two safety measures I need you to know."

Rain water was already pooling on the car park, and running down the ditches to the entrance road. San-Mei had to step backwards to keep her high-heeled shoes out of a puddle.

"Please be aware that paths are uneven, damp and can be slippery," she said. "There are hand-rails on steps within the caves, and as we have a wheelchair using guest with us today, I'd ask you to avoid the stair lifts. There are a number of tight passages and areas with very low ceilings, so please be careful as you walk. We'll also be seeing two of the brand new galleries which have been opened up by this year's excavations, so, because we'll be entering a working area, we will be wearing hard hats at that point. Now, does anyone have any-"

~*~

San-Mei stopped. People's heads were turning towards the cave. "Look!" Christophe said, pointing.

A dark cloud was boiling out of the cave, a twisting shadow so black it was nearly solid, as sinuous as smoke. One of the Algerians exclaimed, sibilant and shocked. Nicole looked up from her i-pad. Jean-luc's umbrella tilted upwards as he watched, and Freddie began to bark.

"Bats," observed Mrs. Wickens. 

"A little early in the day, isn't it?" said father of the teenagers. 

The mother screamed. 

"Maman!" said one of the teenagers. 

"Darling, no, look, it's fine, they're just flying away," said the father of the teenagers, "They're just feeding. I promise. Please."

Three bats swooped, very low, over the tour group. Luckily, the mother had her head in her hands.

"Let's move into the caves," San-Mei said. "Quickly, now!" 

Beside the Transporter, Vikki said quietly to Christophe, "Totophe, bats don't usually come out in daylight."

Veronique said, "We need to move."

The path to the caves ran alongside the stream, a foot or two above the water. It was laid with concrete and equipped with a sturdy wooden rail guarding the drop to the river on the right. On the left, the cliff face had been blasted smooth, bare stone disguised by cheerful posters advertising a nearby theme park, a couple of vineyards, and a circus. As the group neared the cave entrance, a wooden walkway replaced the path, built on piles sunk into the river bed. None of the tour group paused: the rain on the wooden roof was loud, rain-drops battering against the slatted walls and shingles.

San-Mei was waiting by the tiny hut at the end of the walkway. She was smiling, responding to comments - "Yes, the river runs down through the village," "We're been guiding tour groups since 1950. Over sixty years, now," but it was evident she was waiting for someone.

"It's Vikki, isn't it?" she said. 

"Yes," said Vikki.

"And Veronique and Christophe. This is where you leave us, just for the first stretch. Peotr here is going to take you through the access tunnel. You'll have to miss the first two galleries, but you'll be able to look in from the great hall, and the rest of the route is fully accessible." 

Peotr, tall and blond, smiled at Vikki. "We go through wine cellar," he said. "Slow. I understand wheelchair. My sister too."

Vikki nodded back. "Thank you for helping out."

"No problem," said Peotr. "We go now?" He was holding a door open, the rock passageway behind lit with flickering neon lights. There was a large sign on the door, 'Staff Only.' "You see cheese? Good with wine."

"Peotr," said San-Mei.

"Everyone else jealous," Peotr said, with immense self-assurance. "We see first. Okay?"

Maneuvering her wheelchair, Vikki smiled up at him. "Okay," she said. 

San-Mei waited until the door had closed before she said, "We're about to enter the mouth of the cave. I'm just going to remind you that the floor is uneven and wet in places. Please do be careful walking." 

The sound of her high-heeled shoes was hollow on the wooden planking, and then the tone charged to a sharp clatter, metal on stone. Passing from the end of the walkway into the cave entrance, almost every tourist looked up. The roof was suddenly meters above them, arching up and away over their heads, a great stone archway that enclosed a space the size of a tennis court. Above them rock was patterned in broken, stepped arches, ferns and grasses clustering near the light and the interior totally black. The floor under their feet was rock, puddled and pitted, and the daylight behind them cast long shadows. Even the air felt different, damp, still, somehow denser than the air outside. There were no bats, but the faintly sweet, fetid odour of their droppings remained. The Italians, who had been chattering along the walkway, had fallen silent, and the Algerians were pressed very close together. The one in the T-shirt was still shivering. 

The chatter of the stream, a friendly, familiar sound outside, echoed against the rock, picking up a darker tone.

"Welcome to Le Rouque Gris," said San-Mei. "Can you all hear me? Good. The cave we stand in has been known for centuries. Excavations in the early nineteenth century and in the 1970s found that early man had lived here, although unlike other caves in the region, Le Roque Gris has no cave paintings. We do have a number of bones and other artifacts which you'll see later when you go through the site museum. Early man was not the only inhabitant to find refuge in the caves. Our earliest written evidence comes from the Huguenot period, when Protestant apostates sought refuge here, and later in the sixteenth century when, ironically, it was also a home for Cathar refugees. We've found pottery dating to both periods in this cave, and in the second gallery. It was in the seventeenth century that, notoriously, the caves housed the famous Roque witch - we'll find out more about her later on. But it wasn't until the nineteenth century that tourism..." 

The Italians, recovering, had begun to murmur. A few flashlights went off, cameras and phones held up to the great arch of the entrance. Jean-luc, belatedly, folded down his umbrella and said softly to his dog, "I know, I know, we'll be out of this nasty place soon, papa promises."

The Transporter had moved away from the tour group, to the side of the cave. He reached into his pocket, tugging at the lining, and pulled out a thin metal wire. Slowly, surreptitiously, he began to work away at the padlock holding the chain to the suitcase.

~*~

"So, if you'd like to go through now to the next gallery," San-Mei said. As she finished speaking, she pressed a button set onto the rock, and the back of the cave lit up, gold and green electric lights sending sharp-edged shadows across the pale limestone. Strikingly illuminated, the rock suddenly seemed brilliantly artificial, a stage set for a subterranean theatre show, and there were murmurs of appreciation from the tour group. Light also showed the way the cave environment was manipulated for their benefit. The floor under their feet was not stone, but concrete, pitted and worn. Cables snaked along the sides of the cave, where blast lines and the hollow scars of dynamite bores showed where the rock had been hollowed out, and the electric lights gave off a low, persistent buzz. There were even plants growing at the entrance to the first passageway, ferns and moss that were living as much on artificial light as the scanty sunshine reaching the back of the cave.

"Be careful!" San-Mei said. "And stop at the steps."

The passageway at the back of the cave was high and narrow, a three-meter high gash in the rock that forced the group into single file, negotiating the falling floor level. Overhead, water-borne calcite, building up over centuries, coated the crack in smooth, ribboned stone. The rock was damp to the touch, lending heaviness to the air, but not cold. Mrs. Wickens strode through swiftly, although Jean-luc was carrying Freddie. The dachshund had whined, all four feet planted into the concrete, refusing to enter. "Freddie, darling," Jean-luc said. "Freddie, papa is doing his job." And then, helplessly, "Walkies!" In the end, he'd had to pick the dog up, still growling. Nicole had barely glanced up, although the little red light on her i-pad suggested she was recording both tour and tour guests. 

As the passage widened, a flight of steps appeared, built from native limestone, chamfered stone structured in an elegant, expanding curve. Opening up before them as the tour group descended, the cave formed a grotto, twenty meters high and the shape of a teardrop. Two pools, vivid green in the artificial light, curved into the base of the cave, the water mirror still. Between them a narrow concreted path wound into shadow: above, a cluster of stalactites clustered, fat and ribboned with the deposition of centuries. 

San-Mei was waiting. "We call this the green grotto," she said. "It's the second gallery we visit, and this one is the site of the birth of the legend of the witch of Le Roque Gris." The green shaded lights darkened the vivid red of her sweatshirt and lent her face a sallow tint, while the darker skin under her eyes looked almost bruised. She was solidly built, but small, and she had to force her voice to carry across the cave. Ignoring her, the Italians were chattering, one of the teenagers was playing with a hand-held games console, and Nicole was stalking backwards and forwards with her i-pad held at increasingly desperate angles. Even Mrs. Wickens was paying more attention to the rock formations above her head than the tour guide. 

"...sent for a monk from the Abbey of Saint-Monceaux..." said San-Mei.

Nicole was shaking her i-pad, fervent little motions. 

"No connection?" The Transporter asked her, very quietly.

"No," Nicole said. "You'd have thought-" She looked up, and snorted, a breath of quiet frustration. "Well, I guess it's too much to ask they'd have wifi," she said. Tucking the i-Pad against her chest, she wrapped both arms around it, shivering. The pink cardigan and the polka-dotted silk dress, elegant and cheerful as they appeared, were not warm. 

"Waiting on an e-mail?" the Transporter said. "A delivery?"

"No, just work," said Nicole. "It's stupid to be so attached, but this job-" 

"...threatened to poison the entire village," San-Mei said, "By casting a spell on the river...."

Voices carried in the cave. "-has its moments," Nicole said, looking at Freddie. 

"I know what you mean," said the Transporter. He was still working on the padlock.

"...frozen into stone," San-Mei said, and flicked a switch. The entire back wall of the grotto lit up in reds and golds, highlighting the shape of a rocky outcrop which might, possibly, from one particular angle, bear a faint resemblance to a human nose.

"In case you're wondering, the water running through the La Roque Gris does run through the village. A series of springs and run-off streams have cut their way through the limestone, creating two separate water courses. We call the one by the visitor centre the small river, and you'll see the bigger one as we travel through the caves. In fact, if you listen carefully as we go through to the next cave, you may be able to hear the water. I should warn you that we'll be travelling up now through a very low and narrow passageway. It's four feet high at the worst section, so please do watch your heads."

The father of the teenagers, thoughtfully, did not, so that everyone following was reminded by his muffled curse to keep their heads down. The neck of the passageway was very small indeed, forcing the taller tourists to half-crawl. The Transporter, still attached to the suitcase, was moving very gingerly indeed, and the Algerians had to carry their sports bag between them one end apiece, tipping it to negotiate the bends. But the floor was still concreted, and shielded electric lights created little pools of warmth along the walls, strung on thick, black insulated cable. 

The last person through was the teenager with the game console. He paused in the entrance to tuck it away, looking down at the water in the grotto. The red and gold lights had gone out, and the pools were once again the deep, still green they had first appeared, although the reflection of the rocks above shimmered, as if the water was disturbed.

The teenager shook his head, and ducked down into the passage. 

The cave beyond was the size of a church nave. The floor was a mass of tumbled rocks; great blocks ranging in size from the comfortable round curves of a football to the looming angularity of a small truck, rubble abandoned by long-ago floods. Lights high on the cave walls pointed up to the broad, peaked ceiling and the spectacular white pillars of hanging stalactites, picked out seams of glittering quartz, and highlighted the greens and golds of iron ore running through the limestone. The air in this cave was not still. There was a noticeable breeze, tugging at Nicole's scarf and San-Mei's plait, and for the first time the heavy rumble of rushing water could be heard. 

"Please do feel free to explore," said San-Mei. "There are some spectacular formations in this cave. We call it the great hall, and up until 1979 this was the end of the tour. Of course, we'll be going on to another six galleries, but some of the most spectacular natural rock statutes are in this cave. Up there, for example..."

She was standing next to Vikki. A clear passage had been cleared in the centre of the cave, flat concrete compared to the shattered rock on either side, and the wheelchair was comfortably positioned by a smooth stalagmite that bore a very passing resemblance to the Three Graces. Vikki was clearly picking out similarities as San-Mei went on to describe the castle, the dolphin, and the wedding cake. There was no sign of Veronique, Christophe or Peotr, although there were clattering noises from the back of the cave which suggested a small boy exploring. One particularly loud crash made San-Mei pause. 

"I would ask you to be cautious as you walk," she said. "Let's move on." 

Only half the tour group was listening. The rest were already moving on to exclaim over the formations, camera flashes briefly highlighting rock formed into crenellations, lace, waves and towers. The father of the teenage boys was setting up a tripod. 

"Beautiful, isn't it?" the Transporter said to San-Mei.

"Yes, yes," she said. She was walking swiftly, the sound of her high-heeled shoes echoing above the unseen rush of the water.

"Amazing formations," he said. "That one...looks just like a parcel."

San-Mei frowned. "Really?" She paused. "Of course." Her brief smile was wholly professional. 

The Transporter dropped back. He was still attached to the suitcase. 

Mrs. Wickens was walking beside Vikki. The concrete walkway was wide enough for them to talk easily, and Vikki manipulated her lightweight wheelchair along the concrete with unconscious grace. 

"You came through the wine cellars?" Mrs. Wickens asked. 

"Yes," said Vikki. "Huge racks of them. And no dust - you know, when you see the photographs of those chateaux cellars, and all the bottles are filthy? These were absolutely clean. Peotr said there are some bottles stored from before the war - the Germans had used the tunnels for storage, but the villagers knew the caves. There were all sorts of things hidden down here. The Resistance, of course."

"Really?" said Mrs. Wickens. "My grandfather was stationed down here - he was part of the Marseilles landings, very early on. If his squadron known about the wine - well, I'm not sure how they would have drunk every bottle, but they would have tried!" 

"Peotr said that everyone expected the Germans to fight, but when the soldiers came, they ran away," Vikki said. 

"Peotr knows a lot about local history," Mrs. Wickens said.

"Oh, he was a great guide!" Vikki said. "His French isn't perfect, but he knew so much! And he was very kind about the wheelchair."

"You're an excellent driver," Mrs. Wickens said, nodding at the chair.

Vikki laughed. "Thank you. I'm practising for a real car," she sad. "I've got my driving test in two weeks. I wanted to wait to travel down here until I could drive, but maman-" She stopped. "Veronique has really looked after us," she said, her voice quieter. 

"So, how did you get here? Is there a secret passage?"

"Not really," said Vikki. "But there is a secret lift. The Germans cut the shaft - for ammunition, you know? - and now the cave owners use it to move the wine. It's very smooth. Christophe and I-"

They had reached the far end of the cave. Above them, the rock rose sheer and smooth to the vaults of the ceiling, a great flat slab of limestone, with a curving pool of dark water at the base. Light gleamed on the damp rock. To their right, the floor of the cave dropped steeply, a set of steps heading down into darkness, with a stair lift charged and waiting at the top of the rail. To their left, a great cone of loose rock and gravel led up to an open gallery, a dark archway almost at ceiling height. 

"Christophe!" Vikki said. 

The sound of the water was louder here, hiding the chatter of the Italians and Freddie's low-voiced growl. Jean-luc was staring at the steps. He sighed. "The things we do for money," he said, to Mrs. Wickens. "Here I am supposed to be taking impressions for my commentary - how beautiful the rocks are, how magical the stone is, yada yada, and all I think of is all these steps, up and down like a roller-coaster." He was stroking Freddie's back. The little dog had his head buried in Jean-Luc's coat. 

"Is that boy safe?" Mrs. Wickens said.

Christophe was half-way up the unstable cone of rock. "Vikki!" he was calling. "Vikki, I think I've found a fossil for you!" The rocks were shifting under his feet.

"Sir, please-" said San Mei, shielding her eyes as she peered up.

"'Tophe, get down from there!" Vikki shouted.

The teenager without the games console said, peering upwards to the gallery, "What's that up there? Is that machinery?" 

"It's one of the galleries for the miners," San-Mei said. "Sir, please, come down, the rock isn't safe!"

"Only a moment!" Christophe said, bending over on the slope and poking at a loose rock that appeared indistinguishable from every other dangerously loose rock. "I think it's stopped moving now, anyway." 

"Christophe," said Vikki, with taut calm to her voice that suggested someone used to dealing with emergencies. "Where is Veronique?"

Christophe stood up, looking down. "Wasn't she with you?" he asked. Then he looked beyond his sister, back down the great open space of the cave. "Hey," he said. "Hey, is that water meant to be there? I don't remember -"

~*~

Water, silent, slow, dark and inexorable, was spilling across the concrete walkway. It glimmered between the rocks and smoothed the tumbled rocks of the cave floor into dark, pooling shadow.

"Me neither. Is that supposed to happen?" Vikki asked.

Water hesitated, swelled, and spilled over a flaw in the concrete. It was nearly up to the wheels of Vicky's chair. There was no motion to it, no waves or flood, just a slow and inescapable encroachment. 

"Miss?" shouted the teenager without the games console. He wore a grey sweater, with the name of some New York sports team etched on the front. "Miss, my feet are wet!"

"I don't-" San-Mei said, and swallowed. "I've never..." she was backing away, stumbling at the edge of the rock fall.

A shout echoed from the far end of the cave. "Damnit, Maureen, you could have told me, my feet are-" and then, a heartbeat later and far more urgently, "Get the kids out of here. Pete! Jo-Jo! Over here! Now!"

The teenager ran, splashing through the water on the path. It was obvious as he slowed that the flood was deepening, the splatter of water thrown up by his sneakers becoming heavier, until he had to stop running and wade. The cave echoed with his father's shouts. "Jo-jo! Jo-jo!"

"My dear, can you walk at all?" Mrs. Wickens said to Vikki, very quietly.

The Transporter said, sharply, "Is that the only exit? Where we came in?"

San-Mei looked at him, big black eyes in her pale face. "There's the way out," she said, pointing to the steps where the stair lift waited. The flood nipped at the step. A runnel of water slipped downwards, tickling downwards.

"Those steps go down," said the Transporter. "And we climbed to enter. Is there another way out?" He was very calm, looking her in the eyes.

"San-Mei!" a man cried. "San-Mei!" 

A light flashed, carried through the passage into the cave. The man carrying the lantern was a caped shadow in the flickering electric light, a monster, until he splashed urgently into the main cave and became an ordinary, middle-aged Frenchman in a cagoule draped around his shoulders and waterproof boots. He wore a white shirt and dark red tie, slickly sheened in the electric light. "San-Mei, where are you?"

"Duval?" San-Mei asked. She was teetering now, right on the edge of the rock slope. 

The spreading water found the edge of the downward steps, rippled, and surged. Across the floor of the cave, pooling water flattened and smoothed over the top of the rubble. The steps were a series of miniature waterfalls, heavy and powerful.

"The cave is flooding!" Duval shouted. "Get out! Get out, now!" He was waiving the flashlight in his hand, illuminating the faces of the family coming towards him, and the clustered Italians, water to their knees. The white stripes of the sports bag Algerians carried were fluorescent. They were tightening straps, hoisting it between them, beginning to wade towards Duval and his lantern.

Water rippled, great, puddling arcs, around his boots. 

"No," Vikki said, to Mrs. Wickens, "I can't walk without it. I can crawl."

The electric light flickered. A woman screamed, the tone of her voice so high-pitched the echo was painful. Duval shouted, "San-Mei! Your flash-light!" and one of the teenagers cried out, "Daddy!"

The cave breathed. The cave breathed in a great gust of wind, strong enough to slice the water into waves and send light skittering across them, whip Vikki's hair into her eyes and drag Nicole's silk dress around her thighs, an incongruous, filthy calendar pose. The wind smelled of diesel and dead rock, the must of air centuries underground, and there was grit in its clammy embrace.

The Transporter spun around. "Go up!" he shouted. "Climb! The ramp! Go! Go!" He was pushing San-Mei forward. "Take those shoes off!" And then, "Vikki. I'm going to-"

The sound of the crash was immense. Huge, sound echoed and amplified by the stone of the cave system, the sound of violence, of rock smashing and splintering, the noise as vast as a cathedral and as enveloping. Dust blurred the water, small stones pattering down from the roof, skittering along the cone of rock that led to the safety of gallery above. 

"Up!" the Transporter shouted. He had almost reached Vikki. The sound of the water - the rush and flood of water, the sound of the immense surge and swell of a torrent - drowned out his voice. He grabbed Veronique, spun her round and pointed up the slope where Christophe was already almost at the gallery, the little rock ledge that promised safety, but the rocks up which he had scrambled were starting to slip. Then the Transporter nodded at Mrs. Wickens, snatched Vikki out of her chair, swinging the suitcase into her arms, and started to climb himself. Behind him, at the entrance to the cave, the water was high enough to block the cave entrance, ruffled by the wind. 

Mrs. Wickens tugged on Jean-luc's arm and pointed upwards. He shook his head. She smiled at him, and pointed to Freddie. Then to Nicole, standing frozen at Jean-luc's side. 

Jean-luc, soundlessly, swore. Then, with a gallantry clearly borrowed, a little threadbare, from period drama, he offered Nicole his arm with the tiniest of nods, and led them both to the rocks. San-Mei was already scrambling up, slipping backwards almost as fast as she climbed, her feet bare but her shoes in one hand. Behind her, loose stones slipped and tumbled into the water, the splashes a luminous white, although the sound was lost in the noise of the wind and the water.

The first wave was small, lapping at the base of the tumbled rock. The next was bigger. The Algerians, coming back, were pushing through water that was now thigh-high. One of the Italians was screaming, the panicked sound just audible. Then, terrifyingly swift, bursting through the tunnel, the flood came, a tumble and growl of wild, angry water surging through the main entrance to the cave. In an instant the smooth surface of the water was in turmoil, smashed into incoherent waves, pounding against the cave walls. Duval's light tumbled over and over, caught in the first plunging surge: the Algerians were lifted off their feet and flung towards the rocks, Vikki's wheelchair was steel spindrift, swept away, glinting in the flicker of the electric lights.

Torn by the flood, the cone of rock leading up to the gallery shivered and groaned. Rocks were slipping, tumbling, falling. In seconds, the whole slope was in motion, the surface a tumbling mass of stone falling into water. The Transporter's feet were buried in shifting stone as he reached up, passing Vikki to Christophe's stretched-out hands even as he slid down the slope. San-Mei was on all fours, pawing at the stone. Mrs. Wickens and Jean-luc were dragging Nicole between them: Mrs. Wickens had a hold on solid rock, Jean-luc a knee, and between them they were holding firm. Meters below, the Algerians were clinging, bruised and half-drowned and splayed over rock where the first wave had flung them. 

There was no sign of the Italians. Duval had gone. 

Vikki had a firm hold of the rock ledge and was pulling herself up. The Transporter turned, balancing on moving stone, reached down for Jean-luc's hand, and found himself holding Freddie. He cursed, clearly and inaudible, and flung the dog up to Christophe, reaching back down for Jean-luc and beyond him, Nicole. The Algerians, moving fast, had already the same height as San-Mei, and incredibly, were still dragging their sports bag. Falling pebbles collected on the scuffed leather, bowing it into an arc. 

The next wave was smaller, but still powerful, drenching the Algerians and tearing away San-Mei's shoes and her skirt, throwing Duval's limp body against the rocks and accelerating the downward rush of the stone slope. Jean-luc stumbled onto the stone slabs of the gallery panting, with a cut over one eye, already reaching for Freddie. Nicole was white, her hands pressed to her face and shaking. Mrs. Wickens, clambering to safety, was clearly doing her best to express the phlegmatic assurance of the English under fire. The Transporter grinned at her, briefly and fiercely, before he turned back to haul the first of the Algerians, panting and bruised, up onto the shelf. San-Mei was reaching out, pushed by the second Algerian - 

The slope fell away from under their feet. It went silently, thousands of tons of rock falling into the water, a great, unstoppable slide. The Transporter was flinging himself down, stretching for San-Mei's hand, her wrist, holding her against the tide of the rock, every muscle in his back and his arms standing out under his drenched jacket. San-Mei was screaming, flailing, her feet kicking, half her body submerged in streaming pebbles. She was screaming, the sound lost in the rush of rock, pulled downwards by the force of falling stone. Her hand slipped, caught at the suitcase chain still hanging from the Transporter's wrist, and held. Slipped. The suitcase fell, sliding slowly down with the stones, resting against her body. 

The Algerian in the rock-fall screamed. It was a defiant undulation, a war-cry: he was using his weight to swing himself towards the rock wall, swimming in stone. From the ledge the other Algerian was screaming too, snatching the draw-string from his sweat pants and wrapping it around his hand, dangling it over the falling rocks. The tagged end hung, uselessly, a meter above his brother's head. 

The space between the top of the rock fall and the gallery was growing. The Transporter's face was a grimace of pain as San-Mei's full weight hung from the suitcase chain, attached to the steel bracelet around his wrist. Behind him Christophe was clinging to his belt, heels braced against cracks in the rock. Stones still tumbled over San-Mei's body, and she'd hidden her head against her arm as her body twisted. Slowly, link by link, her hands slipped down the length of the chain, the suitcase already pressing into her shoulder.

The water was still rising. It covered the cave floor, an immense, roiling lake, the surface splintered by rock fall and currents. The entrance to the steps was completely under water. One or two of the longer stalactites reached down as far as the surface, dimpling the waves. 

The rock fall was slowing. The Algerian clung to his ledge, fingertips white as bone, nothing but space under his kicking feet. San-Mei was motionless, but the Transporter's ribs were heaving, sweat gleaming on the veins at his forehead. He shut his eyes, and began to pull her up, grimacing. Every muscle on his back was outlined with effort, his shirt soaked. Slowly, pebbles trickling over her body, he drew San-Mei into the safety of the alcove. She was limp, bruised and bloodied, her hands fisted, her clothing torn and stained, the black rope of her hair unravelling, and she was not moving. A deep, bloodied gash cut across the back of her head.

Mrs. Wickens was kneeling beside her. "San-Mei? Can you hear me?" She had to uncurl San-Mei's bloody hands from the chain.

"-river," moaned San-Mei. "Must..." Her eyes rolled up, bloodshot.

"You were caught in a rock fall," Mrs. Wickens said. Her voice, inescapably English, lent a surreal accent to the scene. "I'm going to try and make you comfortable. Veronique? Veronique, do you have that first aid kit?" 

In the battered remains of the tour group, Veronique looked incongruously well-groomed. Her clothing had been neatened, her stockings were unholed, and her hair still beautifully groomed: she had her handbag tucked into the crook of her arm.

"Yes," she said, and knelt down. 

Christophe and Vikki were knotting their belts together, Christophe's thin black leather and Vikki's flowered cloth. The Algerian was shouting to his brother, a high, panicked stream of colloquial Arabic. "Sir," Vikki was saying, holding their makeshift rope out towards him. "Sir!"

When he spun to look at her, his face was absolutely white in the flickering light. "Maa?" 

"Take it." Vikki thrust the rope at him. He looked at it, frowning, as if he didn't understand what he was seeing. Vikki pointed down at the rock fall, but the Algerian could only stare at her in wordless desperation.

The Transporter took the makeshift rope from her, tugging sharply at the knots. They held. He gripped the Algerian's shoulder. "Let's go," he said. 

The makeshift rope was not quite long enough to reach the Algerian on the ledge, short by a heartbreaking ten centimeters. He could jump, and reach it, but to do so he would have to let go of his tenuous hand-hold. The rocks were three meters below him, the water ten: his compatriot's hands were shaking. "Salem," he said. "Salem."

The Algerian on the rock face, Salem, took a deep breath, and pulled himself as far up the rock as he could. The toes of his converses pressed against smooth stone. Every muscle coiled, grimacing, he sprang for the rope. As he fell, an impossible stretch, his thin arms flung out for the rope, hands grasping, the heavy steel watch on his wrist was a dull glint against the darkness below. 

He missed. The tips of his fingers caught the buckle, clinging for a second, and then, horribly, slid free. He fell. 

"Salem! _Salem_!"

The noise, the sound of bones breaking, when his body hit the rock fall, was terrible. His body was limp, when the tumbling rocks carried it away, towards the water. 

"Salem," said the last Algerian, very quietly, clinging to the edge of the alcove, weeping.

"Christ," said the Transporter.

Then the lights went out. 

Jean-luc swore. The dog barked, panicked, high-pitched. A woman gasped, and began to cry, snuffling gasped breaths. "Oh my god," she said. "My god."

Mrs. Wickens said, very evenly, "Does anyone have a torch?"

When the lights flickered back on, Vikki and Christophe were holding hands.  
"There must be a back up generator," Mrs. Wickens said. "For the miners. Of course. I think we should plan for darkness, though."  
The Algerian was still crying.   
Jean-luc said, "There are rails back here. Lights."

Does anyone have a torch?" said Mrs. Wickens.

"Yes," said Vikki. 

"What?" said Christophe. He was undoing their belts, the rope they had made for the Algerian. His fingers were shaking.

"It's a cave," said Vikki. "Of course I have a torch." Her face was speckled with dirt, a smear of it across her forehead. Her hands were streaked with mud. She was drying them on her dress. Then she reached into her pocket and drew out a little silver Maglite. "It worked this morning," she said.

"The wind's coming from the left," said Jean-luc. "But, really, I think we should stay here." He'd managed to quieten Freddie. The dog was whining, very faintly. 

"The wind will show us the way out," said Mrs. Wickens. She stood up, tucking her bag over her shoulder. "Well. Vikki, you have the torch, and you -" she was talking to the Transporter. "Could you carry her?"

The Transporter looked at Vikki. "Yes," he said. 

"We'll need to stay close," said Mrs. Wickens. "No one gets left behind. If the lights go out again, we'll need to form a chain." As if the warning was party to failure, the lights flickered again. 

Veronique said, "Why can't we just stay here? Someone will rescue us." Her face was pale.

Mrs. Wickens said, gently, "The water's still rising. My dear, having escaped drowning once, Id rather not risk it a second time."

Jean-luc said, "That girl is far too injured to move. Please. Stay here."

"We won't have to carry San-Mei," Mrs. Wickens said. 

"She's..." it was Nicole, sitting with her back against the stone. Her pink cardigan was torn, her hands shaking. "She's dead?"

"Yes," said Veronique. She was standing, looking down at San-Mei's body. Mrs. Wickens, gently, tidied the silk scarf around San-Mei's neck.

"Oh, no," Nicole moaned. 

Kneeling, the Transporter laid his left hand on San-Mei's cheek. Then, to the spot on her neck where her pulse should have been. His right hand, braced on the stone, was swollen, his wrist circled with the steel bracelet, the chain lying on the stone. 

For a minute, he knelt beside San-Mei, his head bowed. Then he looked up at Mrs. Wickens, and nodded. 

"Well," said Mrs. Wickens. "The flood is still rising, and I don't think we should wait. Nicole, stand up. You, sir, in the football shirt - thank you, Christophe, make sure he doesn't get lost. Veronique, with me, we'll bring Nicole. Jean-luc, if you could bring up the rear..." She was tugging Nicole to her feet. "Come on," she said, bracing. 

Vikki said, "If I'd known I was going to be carried out of here, I wouldn't have had two croissants for breakfast."

"Hold tight," said the Transporter, gave her the suitcase, and swung them both up into his arms. 

"I still don't think this is a good idea," said Jean-Luc.

"Do you want to stay here and drown, you silly old man?" said Nicole. "If it wasn't - I would be in Paris, if it wasn't-"

The lights went out. The lights stayed out. The sound of the water, surging into the cave, rocking against stone, trickling down the walls, dripping from the roof, was unbearably loud. 

"Get us out of here!" Nicole wailed.

"Nicole, I'm here," said Mrs. Wickens. "Everyone stand still. Vikki, the torch. Take my hand. Veronique."

"We have Jean-luc," said Vikki. "And the Algerian. I can't keep calling-"

Slowly, crackling, the lights flickered on again. Half of them were out, now. The water was black. The rails glinted, dull linear guides, and behind them the machinery of the miners was a stationery maze, tangled wires and shovels and pulleys and wheels. 

The Transporter walked forward. Vikki, in his arms, clung to the suitcase and the torch. Her face, looking back, was very pale. Mrs. Wickens held Nicole's hand, and had one hand on Veronique's arm. Jean-luc held Freddie with one hand and Christophe with the other. Christophe was, gingerly, tugging the silent Algerian by his shirt. Horribly, the Algerian was still dragging the sports bag he and his brother had bought into the cave, and it trailed the small party, the stitching frayed and the leather gashed. 

Behind them, the water was still rising. It had reached the top of both exits, was lapping at the top of the heap of the rock fall, and made little waves and eddies around the stalactites where they dipped into the water. 

His grip slipping, his face filthy and tear-stained, one of the teenagers clung to the white limestone of a stalactite.

Thirty seconds later, the lights went out.

~*~

Instantly, in the galley passage, Vikki switched on her flashlight. The bulb was tiny and the beam weak in the expanse of the passage, but it was light.

"Does anyone else still have a phone?" Nicole asked, her voice sharp and thin.

"There's no reception down here," said Jean-luc.

"For the light," said Nicole.

"Oh, good idea," said Mrs. Wickens. "Veronique?"

Veronique hesitated. "The battery-" Then she shrugged, and reached into her handbag. She had an iPhone, the screen bright enough to illuminate them all, battered, bruised, wet. Rock encompassed them on either side, the passageway reaching out into darkness in front of them and behind, rail tracks glinting. Black cables snaked over the rock of the walls, the caged lights they linked dead. 

Jean-luc too was carrying a phone, although Christophe had to show him how to illuminate the screen. Added to Veronique's, the light from both was enough for them to see a few meters in front. There was no other light. The wind still blew strongly through the passage, but there was nothing beyond their four meter bubble of light, no way out, no sun, no rescue party.

"Keep walking," said the Transporter.

They walked. Veronique was stumbling a little, and Nicole was barefoot and wincing. The Transporter strode, seeming oblivious to Vikki's weight. She had her little flashlight carefully trained on the floor, picking out a safe footing. 

"We could sing," Christophe offered. 

"Perhaps not," said Jean-luc.

"But - oh, hey, wait," said Christophe. "We could introduce ourselves! I mean, say hello. Like, I'm Christophe. That's my sister, Vikki. I'm ten. She's seventeen."

"Jean-luc Devonaire," said Jean-luc. He waited. "Devonaire."

"He's an actor," said Nicole. "I'm Nicole Gaspaux. I'm his PA. Temporary."

"Kathleen Wickens," said Mrs. Wickens. She turned to look at Veronique's, one eyebrow raised.

"Veronique."

"And you?" said Jean-luc.

The Algerian stared at him.

"Your name, sir!" said Jean-luc.

"Yassine," said the Algerian. "My name is Yassine. My brother - my brother is Salem." 

"I'm so sorry," Mrs. Wickens said to him. 

Jean-luc nodded, but Yassine didn't respond. His face looked oddly blank, uncomprehending.

Ahead, the Transporter warned, "I'm stopping. There's something here."

Vikki's flashlight beam arched upwards. The roof of the passage fled in front of the light, rising, until it was lost in darkness. When she brought the beam down, the passage walls showed themselves bowed, spreading into a rough, circular cavern. Metal, rusted, hatched the floor and walls with angular shadows. The cavern held mining equipment, a caged, silent generator, a stack of metal sample boxes, a series of wire containers racked against one wall, holding rocks, and, incongruously, a desk, with a metal packing case balanced on its dusty melamine surface. The rails, gleaming, led onwards into darkness.

"Waystation?" guessed Mrs. Wickens.

"There might be lanterns," said the Transporter. "Rope." He put Vikki down, carefully, on the desk, and reached again into his pocket. While Vikki held the suitcase steady, the torch between her teeth, the Transporter inserted a wire into the padlock as neatly as threading a needle. He rolled it, very gently, feeling for the tumblers. It took thirty seconds for the padlock to click open. Carefully, the Transporter detached the suitcase, smiled at the fascinated Christophe, and coiled the chain around his forearm. "Check the boxes," he said.

Mrs. Wickens was already searching. "Empty. Empty..."

Christophe, bouncing, levered one open. "Overalls!" he said. "More overalls. Rope. Urgh, someone's lunch. Very dead."

"Flashlights," said Mrs. Wickens. "Also dead."

"What kind?" asked the Transporter.

"Electric. No batteries."

"What are these?" Christophe had a tangle of cords and brass fittings.

"Oh, good boy," said Mrs. Wickens. "Headlamps. Check and see if any of them work."

"This is a lantern?" Christophe said.

"Here," said the Transporter, and took one of the lamps. A little brass canister, attached to a circular, saucer-shaped mirror, was set on three nylon straps. "It's carbide. Don't touch the canister." He was unscrewing his own, gingerly, peering into it. "Don't touch!" 

Christophe, guiltily, put the half-separated lamp down.

"They might have slaked lime in the base," Vikki said. "It's a chemical reaction. 'Tophe, it burns, and you can't wash it off. Don't touch any residue."

"Look for fuel," said the Transporter. "A tin. A paint tin. And clean water."

"There's plenty of water back there," Jean-luc said. He was leaning on the desk, beside Vikki. "Clean enough. Oh, don't look at me like that. I'm old. My father had lamps just like those."

"Know how to check one?"

"Yes. You, Christophe, bring one over, your legs are younger than mine. Thank you. Now, watch. This canister is the base, here, where the fuel, the carbide, goes. In here, water. This lever regulates the flow of the water down to the carbide. The two together make a gas. It comes out here, the jet: this-" Jean-luc slapped his hand across the mirror, catching the little metal strike-light and striking a spark "-this is the ignition. Here, yes, is the filter. This must be intact. It stops the grit blocking the jet, yes? And here, the jet, it must be clean. You understand?"

"Yes," said Christophe.

"Yes," said Vikki, fascinated.

"And the light reflects in the mirror. Now all we need is some fuel. Kathleen?"

Mrs. Wickens was opening the last box. "Like paint tins, you said? Like these?"

"Yes," said Jean-luc. "Exactly like those. Now, my dear, if you could procure some water?"

There were six lamps altogether, and four of them worked. Lit, they revealed the tour group, dirty, bruised, and shocked. Mrs. Wickens had lost her scarf, but retained her handbag. Nicole had no shoes. The Algerian's arms were bruised from elbow to fingertips. Even the dog was a bedraggled, dirty scrap of fur, looking very much smaller wet than he had done trotting into the cave at Jean-Luc's heels. 

The light also gave them twenty meters of ongoing passageway, a few coils of rope, a broken wheelbarrow, and a telephone, tucked behind the desk, still attached to an old-fashioned cable.

"My god," said Jean-luc reverently.

Nicole gasped, reaching out.

"Wait," said Vikki, closest, her hand shaking on the receiver. "Wait. No. I don't believe it. Mrs. Wickens! Mrs. Wickens! What do I dial?"

"Nine. Dial nine, for an outside line," said Nicole. 

They were all huddling close, drawn to the unexpected, miraculous contact with the outside world. "It's really crackly," said Vikki. "It sounds like it's going to - hello? Hello? Is that - yes, it's me, it's us, we're in the caves-"

~*~

"-they're in the caves," said LeClerc urgently. He was holding the phone to his ear with one hand, the other held up for silence. "Eight of them." He was listening. His face, slowly, hardened. He turned, his shoulder shielding the phone from the other men in the office. "I understand," he said. "Yes. Yes. Do you - no, describe it to me, this place where you are. A desk? Yes. And the roll cages - wire cages, with rocks? Yes. I know where you are." He was motioning urgently for a pen and paper. 'Waystation #2' he wrote. '8 x ppl'. "Stay where you are," he said. "We'll send people for you. Keep warm. You found the lanterns? That's excellent. Yes. We'll come for you."

The man beside him caught his shoulder. "LeClerc," he said. "LeClerc, no. We don't know if we can get through in time. Tell them to get out."

LeClerc put his hand over the phone. "You want me to tell them we're not coming?" he demanded, glaring.

"Don't lie to them."

"This is bullshit! It's just speculation!"

"Tell them the truth." 

"How?" LeClerc said. "Exactly how do I say this, MacQueen? We know where you are, but we don't know if we can get you out? The tunnel might flood? Maybe the tunnel is flooding!"

"Yes." MacQueen ran his fingers over his hair. He was a spare, powerful man, his hair close-cut and blond, glinting pale where the stubble showed on his chin and his jaw line. He had very blue eyes, narrowed. "That's exactly what you say. And then they have a chance to get out."

Slowly, LeClerc took his hand from the phone. "Vikki," he said, "Vikki, our geologist thinks the cave system is unstable. He wants you to start walking. You should follow the tracks, understand? There is a fork in the passage about a hundred meters from the waystation - from where you are. You must go left, understand? To go right, it's a dead end. Go left. We are sending people for you."

MacQueen nodded once, sharply. Behind him, the computer screen showed rolling lines of data, a chart below the figures rising, a blue line. A middle-aged man in a gabardine raincoat was watching the screen and talking, very low, into his mobile phone. Behind him, two of LeClerc's men were packing a waterproof kit bag with quiet efficiency. Stacks of gear were piled at the end of the hut, ropes and blankets and thermos flasks, harnesses, helmets, and a folded-down rescue stretcher. 

"Yes," said LeClerc. "Yes, I understand."

He put the phone down, and stared at it. 

"They're moving?" 

"She says so," said LeClerc.

"Then let's go," said MacQueen. He was already buttoning up his coat, a fluorescent yellow safety jacket, and pulling on his gloves. "We need more rope," he said. "First aid kit. Flasks. And radios. We need monitoring equipment at the flash points." He was turning to the printer. "I told you, you should never have blown that conduit. It was too close to the river course. If that bulwark blows, they can't get out, and we can't get in. The water is rising too fast."

LeClerc pulled his coat from the hook. "San-Mei died," he said.

MacQueen's hands stopped. "The tour guide?"

"Yes."

"Trumperton will pay for this," MacQueen said. "I promise, he'll pay."

~*~

Hidden in the darkness, twenty meters from the cavern where his companions huddled around the beacon of the landline, the Transporter was holding his own phone to his ear. It was slim, black, and through the alchemy of military technology and a refracted signal, he had a connection.

He had called Inspector Tarconi. "It's me," he said.

"Frank. Frank. Where are you?" 

"Lascaux."

"Do not make the pick up, Frank. The caves are flooding."

"I know," said the Transporter. There was a close echo to his voice.

On the other end of the connection, Tarconi drew in a breath, hissing, through his teeth. " _Merde_. You are already inside."

"Yes," the Transporter. He was muttering into the phone, standing away from the bedraggled tour group, but Christophe was watching him, very still, shoulders hunched and stiff. "We followed the rails in the passage above the great cave. There is a desk here, storage. There is a landline, they're using it now. Seven civilians," he said. "Two of them children. One disabled." 

"Understood," said Tarconi. "Frank, You must climb. All of you. You understand? Get as high as you can. Away from the water."

"Get in touch with the contractors," the Transporter said. "Our route out is the railway, and if that's flooding, we need to know."

"Am I an idiot?" Tarconi sounded exasperated. "I am here. I am sending you a map. The contractor says he does not know. The geologist says the internal baulks are too thin and could fail. The water is still rising, Frank."

The Transporter said, "That's the voice you used when you bailed me out of that Tunisian jail." 

"I am in the site office right now. There is a rescue party. The contractor, LeClerc, is talking to your companion. One more thing."

"What?"

"That suitcase you have attached to your wrist. It has chemicals in it. Understand? You must not get it wet. You must not allow it into the water table."

The Transporter closed his eyes. He turned, shielding his face from the tour group. "What else? I'm not the fucking public, Tarconi. Tell me."

"Fine. You want me to tell you that with the contents of that suitcase you could blow Nice out of the water. I can do that. Frank, Frank, next time you tell me before you take the job."

"Well," The Transporter said, watching the battered tour party, "Maybe I will."

"I am a cop, Frank. This is what I do."

"I know that," said the Transporter. "Get that rescue party on the way. I'll call you when I can." 

He snapped the phone shut. In the light of the carbide lanterns, the burgundy leather of the suitcase gleamed, civil and innocuous, completely unsealed. It sat, gently tilted, between two puddles.

Veronique, gently, tapped her fingers on the handle, and set it rocking.

At the desk, Vikki put the phone down. "So," she said. "Did everyone catch that? They know where we are. They're sending a rescue team for us. But they want us to start walking, they say they'll meet us."

"They could send in a train!" Jean-luc said. "What do they think the rails are for, decoration?"

"They're worried the water table may have changed and these tunnels will flood," said Vikki. "They were talking about it while I was on the phone. The geologist thinks one of the bulwarks could blow out." Her hand was still tight around the phone, white-knuckled.

"But the water is beneath us!" said Jean-luc.

"There's another river," said Nicole. 

"What?" 

"It was on the script for the DVD," Nicole said. In the flickering light of the carbide lanterns, her platinum hair looked white, her eyes dark and shadowed, a dramatic contrast. "The tour Mr. Devonaire is recording. There are two rivers, the little one, the one we followed into the cave, and the big one, the one that goes down to the village. We would have seen it in cave four."

Everyone was looking at her. "I read the script," Nicole said. "It's my job."

The Transporter said, "Anything else useful in the script?" He had the suitcase in his hands, had found gaffer tape, and heavy gauge plastic sheeting and quickly, efficiently, was making it as waterproof as possible. 

"Only that the caves last flooded in '66. Six tourists died. And a guide. It was a year," Nicole said, and swallowed, "A year before they found the last body."

"Well, that's cheering," said Mrs. Wickens.

"My dear!"

"So I'd like to start walking," sad Nicole. She tugs her scarf straight and lifts her chin. "If no-one else minds."

It was only as the Transporter lifted her into his arms that Vikki let go of the phone.

The rail tracks rose gently, leading out of the cavern. The tunnel they followed was rough cut but regular, the flat floor clear of debris and the tracks engineered to a reassuring exactness. There was none of the unpredictable elegance, calcite formations and water-worn rock of the caves below. This tunnel was man-made and functional, revealed in the uneven light of the carbide lanterns. Walking through it, the Transporter carried Vikki, a lantern in her hand. Mrs. Wickens had the suitcase, wrapped in layers of plastic sheeting, and beside her Jean-luc had another lantern and Freddie. Nicole had wrapped strips torn from the overalls around her bare feet, but she was still hobbling. Veronique, a third lantern in her hand, walked silently at her side. Behind them Christophe had discovered that Yassine was part of a university sports team, "So explain the rules to me again," he said, the last lantern swinging in his hand. "I understand the bit with the face-off, but why is the winger who has to pick up the puck?"

The group clung closely, but from the front Christophe's voice was barely audible. Wind, blowing cold and damp, whistled through the cables on the walls and chilled their damp clothes, and the roar of the water was pervasive. The pipes trickled, the roof dripped, the wind carried the sound of the tumbling thunder of water racing through rock. Mrs. Wickens laid a hand on the rock wall. "It's so loud," she said. "Almost as if..." She left the thought unsaid.

They kept walking, following the rising curve of the tunnel. When they came to the fork in the tunnel, Christophe dashed into the right-hand side and came back to say, "There's a crack leading up, but the tunnel finishes! Ends!" He was shouting against the noise of wind and water. 

The wind was laden with spray. They were all starting to look pale and cold, and Nicole was walking with a pronounced limp, wincing as her feet came down onto the rock. Their bubble of light, flickering and warm, illuminated no more than the space of a living room: the darkness pressed in on every side. 

"Not much longer, surely," Vikki said, to the Transporter. She was tense in his arms, clinging to the lantern.

"You'd think-" and then Jean-luc cried out, the expletive explosive. "Merde!"

~*~

In front of them, blocking the passage, raging water crashed through the roof of the tunnel and fell, roaring, into a shattered, gaping sink-hole. The air was wet with spray, the noise massive; the water - water where no water should be - was a river, an elemental, catastrophic wall of water. Light picked out breaks and eddies, the twisting, powerful fall, revealed, in fearful, slow clarity the breadth and weight of a waterfall that blocked the entire span of the tunnel. Where it crashed through the ceiling and pounded into the chasm below, the rocks were sharp-edged and freshly broken. Metal gleamed where the railway tracks were torn up and twisted, the floor of the cave completely destroyed. As the remnants of the tour group stood, horrified, staring, rock fell from the ceiling to crash into the side of the hole. There was a living river crashing through their escape route, thousands of tons of water falling, smashing into the caves below.

Above their heads the rock rose in sheer, unstable cliffs. Water, falling, barred the tunnel. There was no track left, no route to safety.

Jean-luc swore, again obscene and explosive. Nicole was crying. 

The Transporter spun around and carried Vikki back around the corner, out of sight, shielded from the incredible noise of the river. He set her down at the side of tunnel and pulled out his phone, studying it intently. 

Christophe came back wet and pale. "Vik," he said. "Vikki."

"Map," said the Transporter shortly. 

"We need to go back," said Jean-luc. He was clutching Freddie, the dog wriggling in his tight hands. "We have to go back to the waystation! They'll come for us!"

"How?" demanded Nicole. They were all shouting. "How can they? You've seen it! There's no way past!"

Yassine was standing in the middle of the tunnel, head down, mouth moving, eyes closed. 

"We need to find another way!" Mrs. Wickens said.

"Where?" demanded Jean-luc. "Through the ceiling? Maybe the good lord will come and whisk us away! Did you plan for that?" He turned to Nicole. "You stupid, stupid girl," he said. "If it hadn't-" 

"Stop!" said Christophe. "Stop, stop!"

"I'm going," said Jean-luc. "I'm going back. The rest of you can do what you want!" He hefted his lantern. He was looking from face to face. "There's no other choice!"

"There is," said the Transporter. "The other tunnel. The crack. Upwards."

"You think I'm a spider?" Jean-luc demanded. "A bat? You want us to break our necks? You are an idiot! A fool! We should never have listened to you in the first place!" 

Mrs. Wickens had her hand on the Transporter's arm. "What have you got?" she said. 

The Transporter tilted his phone. "Here," he said, his finger hovering over the screen. "Here. This crack, the one Christophe saw, leads up into this gallery. And from there we should be able to follow this gallery - you see it? - and then into the upper shaft." 

"It's almost sheer," Christophe said. He was looking at Vikki.

"This is insane!" Jean-luc said. 

"I think we should go and see if we think it's possible," Mrs. Wickens said. "We won't lose anything by looking."

"There was rope," Christophe offered. "Back by the desk."

Vikki said, "I think we should look as if we can get out ourselves, too."

"Why don't you go back with Jean-luc, Christophe?" Mrs. Wickens said. "You can get the rope and bring it back to us. You know where you're going?"

"There's nowhere to get lost," Christophe said. "I'll be fine." 

Jean-luc was already leaving. "Idiots!" he was saying. 

Bending, Christophe took a second lantern from Vikki. He hesitated for a second, and then reached to her just as she tugged him down. Their hug was swift and fierce. Then Christophe stood, brandishing the lantern. "I'll be back," he said. 

"I, too," said Yassine. He nodded at Christophe. "Not alone," he added.

Christophe said, "Thank you."

~*~

It was not far, back down the tunnel to the fork, but the small group went slowly and carefully. The Transporter was carrying Vikki on his back, her arms wrapped around his neck and his hands supporting her legs, her grip on their lantern firm and steady, lighting the passage ahead of them. Mrs. Wickens still had the briefcase, Veronique the last of the lanterns, while Nicole, flinching with every step, still clutched her i-Pad. Their small party was moving slowly, Nicole's pace, careful to retrace their steps and leaving an arrow scratched into the rock at the tunnel junction.

The right hand turn was not long and finished, abruptly, in a blank wall of rough stone. There, rounded shot-tracks of dynamite still cut into the stone, where the last charges had been laid, and the walls on either side were the same finished curve as the rail tunnel. Piled against the tunnel sides were heaps of cracked, tumbled rock, rough-broken and fragmented, and among the grey limestone shards of smooth white calcite were a fractured reminder of the beauty of the drowned caves beneath them. The last blast in the tunnel had opened up, not the passage, but the great, twisted crack above, smashing through rock and rock formation alike, piling debris across the tunnel. Even the gallery at the top of the crack, barely lit by their lanterns, was covered in blasted rock fragments.

"It's impossible," Nicole said, shivering, looking up. "We can't get up there. You must be mad."

"Nothing is impossible," said the Transporter. He settled Vikki carefully down by the side of the tunnel, and retrieved the lantern. 

"I can't climb that!" Nicole said. 

"Pathetic," Veronique muttered.

"You don't know until you've tried," said Mrs. Wickens. "Nicole, sit down. Let's see if we can get those bandages re-wrapped. You'll need these feet to walk out on, hm? Veronique, please hold the lantern steady for me. Exactly, thank you." She had clearly commandeered the first aid kit.

The Transporter was studying the rock face, moving the beam of the lantern across stone, following cracks and ridges in the rock. The face was rough, almost sheer, but the blasting had left it pitted with foothold outcrops and fingertip ledges. 

"Hold the lantern steady?" Vikki said.

"What did you see?"

"Up there. Right at the top, where the ledge curves into the gallery - well, what we hope is the gallery," Vikki added, and the Transporter inclined his head in acknowledgement. "It looks as if there might be a pillar? A stalactite, maybe?"

At that height, the light from the lantern was so diffuse the stone was all looming shadows, the darkness of the great crack and of the gallery almost indistinguishable, the pale reflection of calcite nothing more than a glimmer in darkness. 

The Transporter nodded. "I see it," he said.

"Good. If you can get a rope around it..." said Vikki. 

"We," said the Transporter. "We."

Vikki looked away. 

Behind them, the murmur of the water slacked for an instant, and Christophe's voice, faint, said, "-up to my ankles-"

Jean-luc's voice, muttering, underscored his. 

It was Yassine, though, who came around the corner first, when the lights flickered behind them. He had a coil of rope in one hand and the sports bag in the other, the bag that he'd dragged out of the cave below where his brother died. Christophe was behind him, wet to the knees, trousers clinging to his legs, and behind him came Jean-luc and Freddie. In the interval, Jean-luc seemed to have aged, his dapper suit shrunk around his shoulders and his jaw line sagging. 

"The passage is flooding behind us," Christophe said. 

Yassine was fastening the rope around his waist, deft fingers weaving and knotting with confident skill. He caught the Transporter by the wrist, an intimacy that stiffened the man's shoulders and set a tick twitching in his jaw, but Yassine did not notice. He was pointing to the sports bag, dragging out the roll of gaffer tape. "Make," he said, his voice urgent. "Make..." he gestured at his own waist, and then at Vikki. "Chair. Chair for girl."

Nicole was crying again. Jean-luc was muttering under his breath.

"Harness," said the Transporter. "Good man."

"There's about ten centimeters of water where the boxes are," Christophe said. 

Yassine was unstrapping the leather straps of the handles, knotting them together. "See? See?"

"Yes," said the Transporter. There was, suddenly, a flash of silver in his hand, a knife no longer than the palm of his hand.

"The water's still rising?" said Mrs. Wickens. She was knotting the last of the makeshift bandages around Nicole's feet.

"Yes," said Christophe.

"My God, yes!" said Jean-luc. "Like a flood! It will kill us all!"

Yassine stood back and looked at the wall. "I go up," he said. "'Tophe. You know?"

"I remember," Christophe said. He had the end of the length of rope coiled, a neat round of it curled to one side, and had fed the spare length around his back, wrapping it around his arms. There were four or five metes between him and Yassine. "Vikki will have the lantern," he said. 

Yassine nodded at her. With purpose, his face appeared sharp and his eyes focused his back straight in the stained football shirt, his sparse, close-cropped beard more of a statement than a fashion mistake. "I go," he said.

Just as he stepped forward, the rope tensioning, the first tickles of water started to run down into the passage. Dusty and tentative as they were, those first runnels were swiftly overtaken by a small rush of a wave, and then another. 

"We will die here!" moaned Jean-luc.

Veronique slapped Jean-luc across the face, Mrs. Wickens hissed, catching her hand, and Yassine started up the wall. He moved swiftly, smoothly, obviously accustomed to travelling in vertical space, his weight over his feet and all his body smooth and limber. He was fast. He did not look down. Behind him, the rope hitched and uncurled, following him up the crack. 

"You little bitch," Jean-luc said to Veronique, certain and vicious. 

On the wall, Yassine hesitated

"That's enough!" said Mrs. Wickens. "Both of you. Enough. Jean-luc, please make sure that rope is untangled for Christophe. Smooth it out for him! Veronique, do not assume that what you do here can be done without consequences, do you understand me?"

Swiftly, Veronique glanced at the Transporter. He did not look back. He was ripping into Yassine's sports bag, tearing the leather panels and straps apart, stitches popping one by one with sharp little breaks.

"Yes," she said. 

"Good," said Mrs. Wickens. "Now. See if you can fashion a few strips out of that scarf, dear, and we'll try and make those feet more comfortable. We're going to make sure you walk out of here on your own two feet," she said, firmly, to Nicole.

Above them, on the rock, Yassine traversed across the face, stretching from hold to hold. He clung, resting for a moment, the rope falling straight to Christophe's hands with its illusion of safety, looked up, and reached out again. The muscles in his arms were wiry and dense, bunching under his skin, making a gaunt, medieval sculpture of his lean body. Cramped and pressured, his fingertips pressed into millimeter-deep holds, and his feet balanced precariously on stances no wider than the barrel of a pen. 

Yassine did not look down. 

"Move away from the face a little, 'Tophe," Vikki said quietly.

Christophe glanced over, nodded, and shifted back a little. The rope tightened in his hands, the curve of it swinging up three meters, four, five, as Yassine climbed. Half-way up he stopped, and clung, motionless, to the rock. Sweat dampened his back, darkening the lines of his shirt. Then he took a deep breath, looked up, and reached for the next hold. 

"The water is rising," Veronique said. She stood, shaking dirt from her dress.

Swung around, shaking, Nicole's lamp illuminated the dark line of water, creeping up the tunnel. It advanced in rushes, a smooth, inexorable tide. "Will we..." she said. "Can we...?"

Mrs. Wickens, watching Yassine, put a hand on her shoulder. Her sensible shoes were a centimeter deep in water, damp to the laces.

"Some light over here," ordered the Transformer. He had a knot of straps in his hands, uneven and tangled. "Vikki, you know what a climbing harness is?"

"Yes," said Vikki. Hands tucked under her knees, she was lifting one leg after another as the Transporter fitted straps around her thighs. 

"And lift up? Good girl. This is similar. More like a rucksack." 

Long straps fell from Vikki's shoulders as she shrugged into the rest of the harness. It crossed her back, tucked under her buttocks, and closed around her waist and thighs. 

"I'm not a light weight," she said.

"We'll be fine," said the Transporter. He did not glance up at the rock.

Yassine was two meters below the gallery, and stalled. He reached out for a handhold, fumbling, and drew back. His left leg was shaking. The weight of the rope around his waist dragged down the rock, a useless lifeline. 

"Go for it, Yassine!" Christophe shouted. "You can do it!"

"Don't distract him." muttered Mrs. Wickens.

Yassine's grin was sharp and his teeth bared as he lunged for the last hold. He caught it, shaking, pulling himself up in a great heave, knees banging against the rock, one palm slapping at the rock, catching, one foot finding a hold, the other, reaching up, climbing in a final heart-stopping rush. He tumbled over the lip of the galley in a frantic heap, all elbows and knees.

"Whooo-hooo!" yelled Christophe. "Good man!"

Above them, Yassine was dragging himself upright. He was smiling. "Okay!" he shouted down. "Tophe! Here!"

"I saw you!" Christophe shouted back. 

"Is good!" Yassine said. He was pointing away from the gallery. "Is road!"

"I hear you!" 

Christophe was loosening the rope, freeing up coils of slack. Fifteen meters over his head, Yassine was passing his end behind the great pale column of the stalactite. "More!" he demanded. "More!" 

At the side of the tunnel, Nicole was standing on a rock, watching the water ride. Her mouth was a tight line. 

"Pull!" Yassine shouted.

The rope held, slung and knotted around the pillar. Two ends dangled down the rock face, the coils at the base darkening with the first rush of the rising flood. The Transporter's boots sent tiny waves across the surface, as he bent in front of Vikki and said, "Give me the straps. Then put your arms around my neck. Hold on."

Just like a rucksack, he tightened the straps, fastening Vikki to his back. Her arms clung around his shoulders, her head against his. When he stood, the muscles of his thigh strained against the damp fabric of his trousers, but Vikki was balanced securely on his back. "Okay?" he asked.

"Yes," said Vikki, very short.

"I'm going to pass the rope behind us," the Transporter said. "We've going to move up the rock as if we're walking. Don't move. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Vikki. Her eyes were closed. 

"Good," said the Transporter. He had one rope wrapped around his lower back, below Vicki's weight, and the length of it twisted around his left arm, braced against his right. One hand clasped the taut length of rope reaching up to the gallery, the other fastened around the trailing end. "Close your eyes," he said. He was bracing their weight against the rope, his feet against the rock. With his right hand a white-knuckle grip on the trailing end below his body, he reached up with his left, gripped, and then pulled the slack down. Now he was balanced against the rock, his weight and Vikki's held by the rope and his own strength, a rough, reversed abseil that depended entirely on the strength of his arms.

He was slow, cautious. On his back, Vikki was absolutely motionless. Above the distant rush of the water falling, the Transporter's breath was a ragged, gasping measure of the strain he was under, but every moment was smooth and powerful. He did not stop. 

Mrs. Wickens was holding Christophe's shoulder so tightly his shirt strained under her fingers. Christophe watched the rock, and the man, climbing.

The Transporter did not stop. 

Yassine was reaching down, beckoning, bracing himself against the lip of the gallery. The Transporter stretched up. Their hands touched, and then the Transporter ducked his shoulder. It was Vikki's harness Yassine grasped, dragging both of them upwards in an ungainly, terrifying roll that sent them both sprawling, safely, across the gallery shelf. 

"Bravo! Vikki, Vikki, Vikki!" Christophe hallooed. 

"Please, no," sobbed Nicole. "No. No!"

"My dear," said Mrs. Wickens. "Please."

"Kathleen, you next," said Jean-luc. "Show her it can be done."

Mrs. Wickens glanced upwards. Her mouth firmed. "Yes," she said, pulling the rope taut, wrapping it around herself as the Transporter had done. "It's been a while since I did this," she said. 

"Wait!" shouted the Transporter. "Use the other as a lifeline! We'll hold you!"

Swiftly, Christophe knotted the rope around her waist. "Go for it," he said, and stepped back. 

Mrs. Wickens did. Slowly, carefully, she went up the face, one foot after the other, held by her own hands and the rope above. It took her as long as it had the Transporter, with his doubled weight, and by the time she got to the top Christophe was knee-deep in water. 

"You next," said Jean-luc. 

Veronique was tying the suitcase to the rope. "No," she said. "It'll be me."

Christophe and Jean-luc looked at each other. Christophe nodded. "It'll take two of us, anyway," he said, and although he did not glance at Nicole, it was obvious what he meant. 

"Madame," said Jean-luc, and tied her into the rope. 

Veronique was quick and sure. Somewhere, she'd done this before, it was obvious in her assured grip and her speed. 

"Nicole," said Christophe.

"I can't!" 

"You can." Said Jean-luc. "If you want to live." He was tying her in. "Look, you're safe. They won't let go, you won't fall."

"I can't, I can't!" wailed Nicole. She couldn't even hold the rope. Her hands slipped, she couldn't brace herself, her legs and feet folded under her...

"Get up there," Jean-luc muttered to Christophe. "Help pull her up. I'll make sure the ropes hold down here."

Christophe, damp now to his thighs, almost ran up the rope, flinging it back as he reached the top. Below, Jean-luc tested knots, wrapping Nicole firmly in both ropes, ignoring her protests. "Hang on," he told her. "For your life, hang on. You can do that, you silly goose." Then, shouting up, "Go!"

Looking down from the gallery, the water was encompassing, a great dark current that lapped at Jean-luc's waist and released Nicole, dripping, rigid with fear, to dangle at the rope face. The Transporter had the ropes, freed from the stalactite, and behind him was Yassine and behind Yassine Christophe, heaving in short pulls, inching Nicole upwards. "Hang on," Vikki exhorted, squeezed onto the side of the ledge. "Hang on, you're nearly there, almost made it..."

But with Nicole unable to give any help, it took fifteen minutes to drag her up to the top. By the time the Transporter was swiftly undoing the ropes that had held her safe, the water was up to Jean-luc's waist, and he was holding Freddie against his shoulder. "Freddie first! The dog first!"

"Send the harness down," said the Transporter, clipped. Nicole was clinging to him, crying. He was trying to free his hands. 

But Freddie, terrified, was not co-operating. Precious minutes passed as Jean-luc, fumbling, strapped and buckled him into a contraption meant to carry a human, not a dog. He howled his way up the ropes, twisting and scrabbling at the rock, and by the time Mrs. Wickens was holding him, filthy and snapping, by the scruff of his neck Jean-luc was clinging to the side of the tunnel. The water rose without violence, steady and implacable. It had reached his chest.

"Now," said the Transporter. "Now. Tie the ropes around your waist. Take hold. We'll pull you up." His hands were reddened and blistered, his wrists burned. "Now, Jean-luc!"

Jean-luc was lighter than Nicole. They pulled him up hand-over-hand, panting, while Jean-luc squeezed his eyes closed and opened them again, tried his best to balance against the rock, and muttered to himself, lips moving, no sound. Water followed him, lapping over the ledge where he'd held steady, rising against the rock face. At the top, the Transporter was gentle, easing Jean-luc's way over the lip of the face onto the ledge, chafing his hands. Mrs. Wickens tucked Freddie into his lap, the small dog whining and trying to bury himself in Jean-luc's sodden shirt.

"Okay, okay, I'm fine, I tell you," Jean-luc said. "Good dog. Who's my good dog, then? Freddie, Freddie."

"You're shaking," said Christophe.

Jean-luc looked up. "Then let us start walking," he said. "I assume you have investigated our route?"

He was looking into the darkness beyond the ledge. Beyond Nicole, huddled against the rock, and Veronique, waiting impatiently with the suitcase in her hands, the gallery ended in a flat bulkhead, entirely cutting off their escape on that level. But to the left, at Mrs. Wickens' back, a split in the rock lead upwards, a chimney choked with boulders and stones that rose steeply from the gallery floor, twisting and turning, the edges of the stone smoothed with the flow of water but dry now. The carbide lamps, illuminating the tumble of rock, reached up into darkness. 

"This is the way out?" Jean-luc said, unbelieving. 

"Yes," said the Transporter.

Yassine was unhitching the rope, coiling it around his shoulders. "We go up?" 

The Transporter glanced down the rock face at the flooding tunnel beneath them. The water was rising faster now, still smooth, a deadly, uncaring weapon. "Yes," he said. 

"I go," said Yassine. "Find safe. Tophe too?" He had a lantern in one hand.

"Yes," said Christophe. He smiled at Vikki, touching her shoulder as he passed, an old and well-worn gesture. 

Jean-luc buttoned Freddie into his shirt. "Well," he said, looking up at the Transporter. "Well, sir, never let it be said an old fool cannot admit his mistakes. If we had stayed below, we would now be dead."

"You're not wrong," said the Transporter. He was kneeling at Nicole's side. "Hey, hey," he said. "You made it. Only a little more. Here."

He had a handkerchief in his pocket, remarkably clean, if damp. "Wipe your face, you'll feel better. There you go, good girl." 

"I didn't...I didn't sign up for this," Nicole told him. Mascara smudged around her eyes, smoky and haunting against the pale clarity of her skin. "No-one said this could happen."

"None of us signed up for this," said the Transporter. He glanced up as stones rattled down the crack, and Christophe shouted out a swift warning to the small group below. 

"What happens when the crack runs out?" Veronique remarked, looking up. Her face was sharp, impassive. "Do we huddle for the last breath of air, or do you think there will be a Darwinian struggle? It's an interesting concept, don't you think?"

Nicole stared at her. "Runs out?" she said. "Do you mean - do you mean that there's no way out?"

"Veronique, that's not helpful," said Mrs. Wickens. "Nicole, let's check those bandages before we move on. Has anyone checked their phone signal recently? We must be getting towards the edge of the plateau."

"They're looking for us, aren't they?" said Nicole. "There's someone out there looking for us? They're not just leaving us?"

"Of course they're looking," said Mrs. Wickens. "I expect we'll hear them before we see them." 

Vikki said quietly to the Transporter, "Any rescue party is going to have to make sure the caves are safe before they come in, aren't they? There's no point risking more lives."

The Transporter nodded. He looked at his hands for a moment, the palms split and burned by the rope. Then he looked back at Vikki. "Either we both get out of here," he sad, "Or neither of us does. And I have a table reservation in Nice tonight."

Vikki was smiling. "Yeah," she said. "I've got a driving test to take."

Christophe's voice echoed when he shouted down, the rock adding a hollow darkness to his voice. The faint glow of the carbide lamp at the top of the crack disappeared, appeared, and disappeared again. 

"What is it?" shouted Mrs. Wickens. 

"...through!" said Christophe, the word tumbling against stone. 

Yassine was speeding back down to them, sending little sprays of gravel trickling amongst the boulders. His hands were describing a peaked chimney, a passageway, the steep climb up the rocks, but flat to follow. "We go!" he said. 

"Nicole," Mrs. Wickens said, very firmly. "Up. Now. By the time we're over the first few feet, those nice boys will have the rope ready. It'll be just like a handrail."

"Ready?" the Transporter asked Vikki. 

She nodded, as he bent to pick her up. "I'm holding tight," she said. 

As Yassine set off again, unreeling the rope as he went, Jean-luc and Mrs. Wickens were already giving each other a hand up the slope, chivvying Nicole in front of them as they went. They were balancing on the tumbled rock, stepping from one precarious balanced pile of stones to another. The slope was steep, twisting through the crack, crowded with boulders and shelved with shingle, each smooth stone as insecure as the tide of pebbles on a beach. Uneven, insecure ledges stepped towards the pale glimmer of Christophe's lantern, at the top of the crack. 

Nicole was as slim as a fashionista's diet could make her, but as Jean-luc and Mrs. Wickens began to move, the slope settled, groaning and cracking under their weight. "Up, up," urged Yassine, sure-footed, above them.

"We are," said Mrs. Wickens. She gave Jean-luc a hand as they negotiated a large boulder, courtly as any Victorian gentleman. 

Jean-luc kissed it. "My hero," he said, with a flourish. 

Vikki was giggling into the Transporter's neck, but Nicole, perched miserably between two scree runnels, was unbelieving. "How can you? We might die here, and you - playact! Like this is a game!"

"What else is there?" said Jean-luc, eyebrows arched. "Come, friends, forward, into the valley of death!"

"Well," said Mrs. Wickens, very dry, "I don't know about you, but I'm not exactly cheered."

"I'd kill for a cup of coffee," Vikki said. 

"Tea," said Mrs. Wickens. 

Nicole spun, gravel skittering under her wheels, and went up a few more meters in an exasperated rush. Smoothly, Veronique followed her.

"They will be preparing for the afternoon service at my favourite bistro," Jean-luc said. "Francois will be unfolding the table-clothes - there is a knack to it, you know? A snap to the way the fabric unfolds. And then, the billow, the straightening, the smoothing of the creases, the dusting.... They are red and white checkered, his tablecloths, very cheerful." He paused, breathing hard. 

"I like those bowls of natural sugar," Vikki said. She was very, very still, as the Transporter balanced, moved, and steadied again, managing their combined weight on an unstable ladder of rock. "The kind that comes in lumps."

"I've always been particularly fond of my mother's silver tea set," said Mrs. Wickens. "There's something very civilised-" she slipped, clung, precarious, to her handhold, and slowly regained her balance. "-about a perfectly served afternoon tea."

"My partner bakes madelaines," said the Transporter.

"Ah, Proust!" said Jean-luc.

The Transporter came very close to a smile, closed-mouthed. He was nearly to the top of the slope, sweat shining on his forehead and plastering his shirt sleeves to his biceps, his trousers to his thighs. The shoulder seam of his shirt was parting. "I'm all in favour of the classics," he said. 

Nicole scrambled over the lip of the slope, feet on solid ground.

Jean-luc said, "Under that lamentable bare scalp, you are smiling, my friend. Your partner has educated you."

"Tried," said the Transporter. He unwrapped Vikki's legs from his waist, sitting both of them carefully against the rocks, allowing her to take her own weight and resting his back.

"Tell me it's flat up there," said Mrs. Wickens.

The Transporter looked down. "I won't lie to you," he said. 

"Well, I'm eternally grateful," said Mrs. Wickens. "I'd be more grateful if you could bring yourself to carry this damnable suitcase for a few meters more." She was holding it in one hand, the other free to help her balance. By now, the plastic covering the suitcase was ripped and grazed, showing the strain of their journey.

"I would have gone back for it," the Transporter said, reaching down to take the weight from her hands.

"No, no, you have Vikki," said Mrs. Wickens. "This way you don't - Nicole, are you all right? Hang onto the rope, dear."

Still standing at the top of the slope, her silhouette gently illuminated by Christophe's lamp, Nicole turned to stare down at her. "This is insane!" she said. "Unbelievable!"

Jean-luc sighed, reaching out to relieve Mrs. Wickens of the suitcase. "Soon this will be nothing more than a bad dream. There is always light at the end of the tunnel, hein?"

"Don't worry," Christophe said, his voice muffled. "Maman always says-"

"You don't understand!" Nicole said. "We're never going to get out! We're not meant to get out! They'll never let us-"

When she fell, there was a balletic elegance to the folding of her body, the way her skirt floated and danced around the pale beauty of her legs. The moment stretched into slow motion, lengthening into infinity, the cloud of her hair, the way her arms folded around her body, fragile as bird's wing, her silence as she fell. 

Then, the heavy thump of her body hitting stone. Spread-eagled at the moment of impact, fifteen meters below Jean-luc, she looked in that moment as if she was still flying, before the force of her falling weight tipped the rock into motion.

"Up!" shouted the Transporter. "Now!" He had the rope fast, Vikki clinging to his back. "Ma'am, get the fuck out of here!" 

The unstable slope was shifting. At the base, first the skitter of small rocks and gravel, and then the greater rumble of boulder, turning uneasily, forced into motion. The tide ripped upwards, carrying away the ledges where they had rested, until the whole slope was moving scree, a rockslide that crashed down into the passage below, running down into every void, filling the crack they had scrambled through ten minutes beforehand. In seconds, Nicole's broken body was covered in a tumulus of raw-edged limestone.

On the ledge, Mrs. Wickens said softly, "She could not have survived that fall."

"No," said the Transporter. He had the suitcase in one hand, the other holding Vikki in place. "No. She could not."

"But she was safe!" Jean-luc cried. "She was here, just here, just a moment ago!"

"Quite," said Mrs. Wickens.

~*~

"If they made it up here," shouted LeClerc. He was streaming with water, his hair plastered to his scalp, spray from the cascade beyond glistening on his yellow safety jacket. His voice was almost lost in the thunder of water smashing against rock.

"Oh, they made it," shouted MacQueen. He was pointing past the torn, jutting steel of the torn railway girders, over the great chasm the water had torn in the rock, to the passageway beyond. Half-hidden in spray, Nicole's Hermes scarf fluttered from a severed cable.

"Fuck," said LeClerc, staring.

Water was flooding down the passageway, pouring into the chasm. 

"If they were there," he said. "They ain't there any more."

MacQueen glanced at him. "They went up," he said.

"There's no way!" LeClerc protested. "That passageway's a dead end!"

"Not quite," said the man in the gabardine raincoat.

LeClerc spun around. "And who the fuck are you!" he exclaimed.

The man in the gabardine raincoat looked up from his phone. "My partner is with that tour group, Monsieur LeClerc," he said. "And he has a map. This I know, because it was I who sent it to him. And I can tell you that right now, they are making their way along...what it is you gentleman call it? The U-bends? The passageways above this first adit."

"You cannot know that!" said LeClerc. "I'm telling you, if they're still alive, they will not be for long! Look at it, man, who can survive that!" 

In front of them, the waterfall was powering down into the chasm. Water was flooding out of the passageway. The rock itself was trembling with the power of it, an unsteady, terrifying instability.

"They are still alive," said the man in the gabardine overcoat. He turned the screen of his phone to face them. There, luminous in the dark passageway, a text read, "Rock fall. Six in party. Heading up. Package secure." It was time stamped to three minute ago.

"And what the fuck does that mean!" shouted LeClerc. 

"They lost one," said MacQueen.

"Yes," said the man in the gabardine overcoat. He held his hand out. "Inspector Tarconi," he said. "My partner is in the process of escaping your extremely inconvenient flood. Mr. MacQueen, I believe?"

"Yes," said MacQueen. His hand shake was brief and hard. "Well, Inspector Tarconi, let's see what we can do to get your partner out of here alive. LeClerc, take a look. How long do you think we have until the system reaches capacity?"

LeClerc flung a hand out, bracing himself against the rock. Even in the shadowed light of the carbide lamps they all carried, he looked pale. "Capacity?" he said. 

"Look," said MacQueen. 

Before their eyes, in the great space of the chasm at their feet, the level of the water was steadily rising. Despite the immensity of the caverns and passages beneath their feet, the volume of water spilling from the plateau was too great. In minutes, it would begin to spill into the passageway where they stood.

"Problem," said Inspector Tarconi.

"You blew the adit, didn't you?" said MacQueen, looking at LeClerc.

LeClerc ran his hand over his face. "Yes," he said. 

"You knew that would change the drainage pattern," said MacQueen. 

"Yeah, I knew!" said LeClerc. "Of course I knew! What the fuck, man, was I supposed to predict the storm of the century?"

"Maybe you should have done!" said MacQueen. "Because then-" He looked away, his face drawn. Then his eyes snapped back to the rising water. "You know what this means, don't you?" He was pointing at the rising water, violently emphatic. "Every single liter of this mess is trying to squeeze out through a three meter drain. You know it's going to blow. And then this whole system is going to flood out. Straight down to the village."

He held LeClerc's eyes. For a moment, they squared off, LeClerc's fists clenched, MacQueen's eyes narrowed, and then LeClerc spun away and slammed his fist against the rock. "I told him," he said. "I fucking told him."

MacQueen put a hand on his shoulder. "We're going to get the hell out of here," he said. "And then we're going to blow the south passage."

He waited. And then LeClerc's head came up, his shoulders firming. "Yes," he said.

~*~

"It's at times like this," said Mrs. Wickens, strained, "That I am grateful for a certain restriction in height."

"Indeed so," said Jean-luc. "Please tell me - at least is there space to stand up, where you are?"

"I could tell you that," said Mrs. Wickens, "But I would be lying." 

Ahead of her, crouched in front of a crack in the rock the size of a dustbin, Vikki turned and grinned at her. "I don't mind," she said. "All my strength is in my arms."

Extracting herself from the cramped passage, Mrs. Wickens muttered, "If I'd known, I would have taken up weight-lifting. Any word from the boys?"

Vikki was holding the lamp steady, the beam directed into the narrow slit of darkness ahead. "'Tophe?" she called. 

Her voice echoed, flung back into the cramped chamber. "Christophe?"

Only a muffled rumble came back to them. 

"So, we wait," said Mrs. Wickens, shuffling herself into as small a space as possible as Jean-luc's hand emerged from the passageway. "Oh, please, pass that dog out," she said, and received, gingerly, a very dirty, subdued dachshund. "Have some pride," she muttered to it. "Remember your ancestors."

"Freddie is..." said Jean-luc, gingerly pulling himself forward. "...a very distinguished..."

"Watch your head!" said Mrs. Wickens.

"Aie!" said Jean-luc, tumbling into the chamber. "This is...a moment of intimacy. No, Freddie, stay where you are, papa is - oh well, then, fine, but - that's filthy, little one, you really don't want-"

"Vikki!" 

Christophe's voice, from the passageway ahead, sounded hollow.

"Vikki, push the lamp through, I'm here! And then come through!"

"What's it like through there?" Vikki shouted.

Mrs. Wickens and Jean-luc looked at each other. They were both filthy. A streak of dirt smeared across Mrs. Wickens' forehead. Jean-luc's face looked drawn, his wrinkles pronounced. He had one hand on Freddie, but the other was pressed flat-palmed to his chest, and he was breathing in swift, shallow pants. Both of them were sweating, their clothes damp and torn. Mrs. Wickens' tweed skirt was ripped at the hem, the lining fraying, and Jean-luc's trousers were torn and ragged at the knees. There was a graze on his elbow, the skin ripening with the mottled reds and purples of a painful bruise.

"My dear," Jean-luc said quietly.

"Christophe says they've found a cave!" Vikki said, pulling back from the passageway. "It's safe to go through."

"Thank God," said Mrs. Wickens.

As Vikki handed the lamp into the passageway, Jean-luc leant his head against the rock and closed his eyes. Under his still hand, Freddie barked, thin and sharp.

~*~

"Ow, wow!" exclaimed Vikki, looking up. "That's - oh, that's so beautiful!"

Above her head, the diffuse light of their carbide lamps swept across the roof of the cavern. Gleaming white, the elegant tracery of stalactite hung in static beauty. Here, were few visitors had stared at the rock, where no candles or torches had left centuries-old deposits of soot and grease, the formations were pristine and beautiful. "Look!" Vikki said. "That one could be a ship! Can you see the curve of its sails? And over there - look at the way it gleams, there must be copper in the rock!"

"That's not a ship, it's a cat," said Christophe. "Look, it's even got whiskers!"

"I was beginning to think I would never stand upright again," Mrs. Wickens muttered to Jean-luc.

"I know what you mean," said Jean-luc. His posture was cramped, his shoulders hunched, his hand still protectively at his chest.

"Like a cathedral," said Vikki softly. There was a pool of water at one side of the cavern, dark and still. A beach of clean white sand sloped towards the water, cut by a single set of footprints: standing by a pillar at the far end of the beach, Yassine was securing their rope. The lamps cast his shadow across the sand, angular and elongated.

Of them all, Veronique was the only one who appeared almost as she had done when they entered the caves. Her hair was still immaculate, her clothes straightened, and her hands and face were clean. But her eyes were narrowed and the small smile she wore was as sharp as a knife. "So, my nameless friend," she said to the Transporter. "Now we are here, perhaps we should consider where we are going?""

The Transporter turned to face her. The narrow, cramped passageways they had just traversed had left their mark. He had lost his jacket, and his shirt was ripped at the shoulder, one sleeve dangling from yoke and cuffs. A scratch curved around the width of his bicep, clotted with dried blood, and his hands were bruised, swollen at the knuckles. Where the leather harness he used to carry Vikki bit into his shoulders, the skin was reddened and beginning to darken. 

"There," he said, pointing.

They looked. 

"But that's..." Vikki was frowning.

"Water," said the Transporter. "It's a sump."

"A what?" said Christophe.

"An underwater passageway," said the Transporter. "It's around seven meters long. It takes us through into the blue cavern."

"What?" said Vikki sharply. She reached out: Christophe, without even looking, put his hand on her shoulder. "That's the upper system."

"Yes," said the Transporter. "It is."

"But the upper system is open," said Jean-luc.

Yes," said the Transporter. He checked his phone again. "We came up about twenty meters," he said. "It's given us some breathing space, but it's not going to hold forever. The sooner we get through the sump, the sooner we get out."

"Are you telling me," said Veronique. "That...that-" she pointed. "Is the way out?" 

"Yes," said the Transporter.

"My God," breathed Jean-luc. He sat down, quite suddenly, on a boulder.

"Through the water?" pushed Veronique.

"You can swim, can't you?" said the Transporter, sharply. "Ma'am, I'll need to make sure that seal is absolutely watertight." He was taking a roll of duct tape out of his pocket.

Veronique began to laugh. "You're planning on taking...that...through _water_?" she said.

"Can't see why not," said the Transporter. His hands held, very still, on the suitcase. "Why? Do you know something I don't?"

"Maybe I do," said Veronique. She was walking backwards, very steadily. Something metal glinted in her hand. "I don't think," she said. "I don't think we're going anywhere." 

The gun in her hand was small, snub-nosed, and starkly threatening.

The Transporter sat back on his heels.

"Don't move!"

"So it was you," he said. 

Vikki's hand was whitening at the knuckles, Her face was frozen, mouth wide open.

"What was it?" said the Transporter. "Love? Money? Nihilism? You ever stop to think about the consequences? How many people in the village - four hundred? Five? What about the rescue teams? You stop to think about how many people are going to die?"

"Do you think I care?" said Veronique. She had her back to the rock, now, her hand steady, the gun pointed directly at the Transporter. "I know who you are," she said. "Don't move."

"I wasn't planning on it," said the Transporter. "But I am curious. What were you hoping to achieve?"

"Ask him," said Veronique, jerking her head at Jean-luc. "Any publicity is good publicity, right? Even for some washed-up two-franc actor on a failed sit-com. Still worth a headline or two when you drown," she added. 

Jean-luc gave her a contemptuous glare. 

"You know I would never have given you the explosives," The Transporter said.

"Oh, you think we didn't know about your annoyingly moral streak?" said Veronique. "That interfering detective you're fucking? What makes you think you were supposed to hand them over? You're living on borrowed time, Transporter."

"You're not the first person to say so," observed the Transporter. He picked up the duct tape.

"Put that down!"

"Why, so you can shoot me?" The Transporter tutted. "Better women than you have tried and failed. Don't pull the trigger, darling, it'll hit the explosives before they get into the water system."

"That's...what we've been carrying?" whispered Vikki.

"There's a reason we're been dragging it with us," said the Transporter. He stood up. "Veronique. You don't really want to-"

The first shot went wide, striking stone, chipping splinters from one of the stalactites. In the enclosed space, thunder of it was a weapon, shivering through stone, sending dust trembling into the lamplight, making Vikki clap her hands over her ears.

"Step away from it," said Veronique. The gun jerked once, towards the water. "Get over there."

"Fire that again in here and you'll have the ceiling down," said the Transporter. He was, inexplicably, toying with his shirt. The cuffs came undone. Then the top buttons. His muscular chest was clean shaven and gleaming with sweat.

"So?" said Veronique. She was smiling again, wide, open-mouthed. "Any last words? No? No last love-note for the-"

The second shot was accurate. Water shivered with the concussive blast, stone vibrating, the dust thickening in explosive clouds: the echo was immense, a great blast of sound that rebounded across the cave. Against the wall, Veronique looked faintly surprised. She had one hand pressed to her heart: the other, still holding the gun, was dropping. 

"You shot me," she said, amazed. Her knees were folding. 

"No, I didn't," said the Transporter. He was still standing, the only one of them who had not ducked for cover.

"You-" she'd fallen. Her hands were braced against stone. Blood blossomed, dark in the lamplight, across her blouse. "You bastard." It came out a grunt, from between gritted teeth.

"Inaccurate," said the Transporter.

Veronique's head dropped. Her hands lost their grip. The gun spun away from her hand, useless.

She fell.

The Transporter waited until the echo had faded until he said, "Thank you."

"Well, I don't think that kind of explosion is in anyone's interest," said Mrs. Wickens primly, tucking the Beretta back into her shoulder holster. "Imagine that kind of poison in the ecosystem. Not a situation we in Britain would condone. My thanks for an excellent distraction technique, sergeant." Her voice was very dry. 

"Any time," said the Transporter politely, discarding the last rags of his shirt.

"But-so-" Vikki was shaking her head. 

"Later," advised Mrs. Wickens. "Because I think that time you won us is nearly up." She was pointing at the beach. Where the Transporter had discarded his shirt on clean sand, water was already dampening the hem. 

"Is she - dead?" asked Christophe, faintly.

The Transporter strode to Veronique's body. He pressed his fingers to her neck, under the concealing fall of her hair. His eyes were closed. "Yes," he said, and stood up. He paused. Looked up. Put a hand on the rock.

The dust still hung in the air, trembling. In the silence, they could hear a faint echo, a low-pitched, almost inaudible whine.

"They're drilling," said the Transporter. He looked at Mrs. Wickens.

"They're going to blow the drainage system," she said. "We need to go."

As she stood, a sliver of rock fell from the ceiling. Then, another, splintering on the rock by Christophe's feet. "Onto the sand" she said. "Quick!"

"The rope!" The Transporter had swung Vikki into his arms. "Yassine!"

"Done!" said Yassine. "Swim. You. Christophe. I finish."

"The suitcase," said the Transporter.

"I have it," said Mrs. Wickens. "You're going first, with the rope?"

"It's as black as pitch down there," said the Transporter. He had set Vikki down by the water and was knotting the end of the rope around his waist. "I'll take the rope through, fasten it up at the other end. Then I'll come back for the rest of you."

"No," said Vikki.

"If you think he can't get you through-" began Mrs. Wickens.

"I can swim," said Vikki. "Probably better than you. And he can't take the rope and the suitcase. What happens if the rope gets caught on the way through? What are you going to let go of, the rope or the suitcase?" she said to the Transporter. "What's more important, us or the explosives?"

For once, the Transporter was speechless.

"This is something I can do," said Vikki. "Take that rope off. Loop it, I'll slip it around my wrist."

"Sister," said Yassine. He was reeling the rope in, coiling it. "Sure?"

"Yes," said Vikki. She was taking off her shoes. "I know how o do this. I've practised this."

"Just get to the other end," said the Transporter. "Tug on the rope three times when you get there."

"I hear you," Vikki said. "Three tugs on the rope." She held up her hand for the loop of rope. "A minute, tops. If I haven't replied, something's happened. Get everyone else through."

"Yes," said the Transporter.

Vikki shuffled to the edge of the water, and rolled into it. On land, she was ungainly, her paralysed legs dangling. In water, she was suddenly sleek, assured, smiling.

"Three deep breaths," she said deliberately, took them, and ducked.

Water rippled away from her sinking body.

"She can swim, you know," said Christophe into the silence. "She tried out for the Paralympics team."

The ripples widened.

"She's really good."

The Transporter's shirt was floating in the water.

"Come on," said Mrs. Wickens briskly. "If we're going to get this suitcase through, we want to be very sure it's as watertight as we can possibly make it. Jean-luc, could you...?"

"Yes," said Jean-luc. 

The word was breathy and strained, but he was kneeling, holding the case steady as the Transporter wrapped it, one eye on the slowly unspooling rope. 

"Do you think-" Christophe did not finish the sentence. The rope had stopped.

Bending, the Transporter took his shoes off. Then his trousers, folding them neatly. He did not take his eyes off the rope.

"I'll come back for you," he said. "I will come back for you."

Yassine touched the rope, peering into the darkness of the water. "No light," he said to himself, very soft. 

The Transporter dropped into the pool, and the rope jerked three times.

"She made it!" exclaimed Mrs. Wickens. "Oh, good girl!"

"Christophe!" said the Transporter. "You next. Shoes off, good boy. Take three deep breaths. Deep! You need to fill your lungs. Pull yourself through with the rope. Always keep one hand on it, you understand? Never let go. Do not let go."

"I understand," said Christophe, breathing deeply. "She got through, right? She's waiting for me."

"Yes," said Yassine. 

"Okay then," said Christophe, and ducked into the pool.

"Yassine," said Mrs. Wickens. 

"You," said Yassine.

"Oh, no," said Mrs. Wickens, smiling. "I'll need someone to pull me out at the other end."

So it was Yassine who went next, slipping through the water, and then Mrs. Wickens, grimly determined. "Not my best subject at school," she said, "But I'll make it." And did, the rope's swift jerks coming soon and definitely. 

"Now you," said the Transporter.

Jean-luc's breathing was shallow, but his face determined. He had Freddie tucked into his jacket. Neither he nor the Transporter mentioned how unlikely it was that the dog would survive.

"Break a leg," the Transporter told him, but Jean-luc did not smile as he slid into the water.

Left alone, the Transporter checked the rolls of tape around the suitcase once last time. The sound of drilling was louder, and another chunk of limestone fell from the rook, crashing onto the boulder where Jean-luc had been sitting.

The rope did not move.

The Transporter stretched, eyes on the coils.

The rope was motionless. The Transporter's watch recorded three minutes. Four.

He dived into the water. Two feet down, the darkness closed in. He felt his way along the rope, slowly, searching with his hands and feet. Above his head, the mass of the rock curved down, down, and he perforce kicked down with it, sinking into the depths. There was no rock under his feet, no way to tell how far down the water fell. There was no light at all, although the Transporter has his eyes open, every sense extended, Cold bit into his fingers and toes, the thin skin at the back of his knees, struck his chest and his throat. 

The rope began to rise again, and the Transporter with it. Above his head, the water was lightening. Someone over his head, there was light.

His fingers caught cloth. It was heavy, weighted: he drew it in.

He came out of the water with Jean-luc's body in his hands.

~*~

The Blue Cavern had been open to tourists for fifty years. Electric lights illuminated the stone, cables looped across the walls, and the floor had been cleared and made smooth. A pallet of hard hats stood nest to a control panel, a clipboard hanging from the casing. Even the air was different, a living breeze that smelled of rain and fresh grass and limestone.

A set of steps led up to the entrance passageway, and beyond them beams of light crossed the darkness. The air was thick with dust, but the sound of drilling had stopped. Voices, indistinct, resolved into individual voices.

"We are not blowing this cave until everyone is safe," said a man with a clipped American accent. 

"We blow this cave, and it'll take months to get back into the workings." But this man's voice was resigned.

"It's the only way," said the American. "Inspector?"

"Nothing," said a third man, his voice soft and rounded with the vowels of Southern France.

The Transporter hitched Vikki further up his back, and lengthened his stride. 

"Nothing yet," said the Inspector.

"Hey!" someone shouted. "Isn't that-?"

"Quiet-"

"Oh, my God," someone said quietly.

Christophe said, "Hello. I think - could we have some help?"

And then he burst into tears.

~*~

"Well," said Tarconi, watching the last of the paramedics leave the car park. "Frank, I will of course expect you in my office tomorrow morning." He turned, and laid his hand on the Transporter's shoulder. He was not smiling.

Fractionally, the Transporter's shoulders had relaxed. His head was turned away, the shadow of his lowered eyelashes slashed across his cheekbones. It was midday. All the shadows were sharp. His wet clothing was steaming, very gently. "I'm sorry about missing the fishing trip," he said.

"I do not give a flying fuck about the fishing," said Tarconi. "You hear me, Frank?"

"Yeah," the Transporter said. He looked up. "I need a bath," he said. "Clean clothes. I'm...tired."

"I am glad to hear you say so," said Tarconi. His hand tightened. "You could have died, Frank, and I am getting too old for this. So I would be obliged if you made retirement a rule."

"I hear you," The Transporter said. He was looking away again. He sighed. Then he reached out, fast, and dragged Tarconi into his arms. They were not the same height. His chin rested, briefly, on Tarconi's hair. Then he tucked his face into Tarconi's shoulder and held on. "Okay," he said. 

The sound of the engine of the last ambulance faded into the distance. Sunlight burned, midsummer hot. Heat struck up from the dry asphalt. There were beads of sweat on the Transporter's temples. He said, into Tarconi 's neck, "That was not easy."

Tarconi patted him on the back. "Okay," he said. "You can say it, Frank. Thank you, Inspector Tarconi , you did good work. I promise never again to ignore your advice. No more dangerous deliveries. No more jobs. Perhaps no more caves."

The Transporter pulled back. "Inspector," he said. He was not smiling, but there was a lift to his mouth, a deepening of the laughter lines at the corners of his eyes. "I was thinking," he said, "Of taking up hang-gliding." 

Tarconi looked back at him. 

"No water," explained the Transporter.

"I do not think that this is one of your better ideas, Frank," Tarconi said.

~*~

Sunlight cut into the edges of the cliffs, sharp as stone. The silks of the parachute shone jewel-bright, and the shadow of the jumper was the size of an ant, knifing across the shrubland and rock of the river valley. Tarconi was following it, the wheels of his jeep kicking up dust and gravel, his eyes switching between the graceful fall of the parachute and the curves of the riverside track. His forearm, resting on the open windowsill, was darkly tanned. He wore a headset.

"Yes, yes, I see you," he was saying.


End file.
